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What circumstances led Helen Keller to be accused of plagiarism?

Helen tells us this story in Chapters 14 and 15. She was about 12 years old when she wrote a story she originally called “Autumn Leaves” and then re-titled as “The Frost King.” She sent it to Mr. Anagnos at the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, and he chose to publish it in a school report. Unfortunately, it turned out Helen’s story was quite similar to a story called “The Frost Fairies,” written by Margaret T. Canby and first appearing in a book called Birdie and His Fairy Friends, originally released in 1874. Evidently, the Hopkins house had a copy of this old book; and once when Helen was staying there, someone read the story to her. She was used to assimilating everything she read and learned, and she hadn’t realized the story she wrote wasn’t her own work. She didn’t remember having ever heard the tale before. Perkins launched an investigation. Helen had to appear before a committee without Anne Sullivan to help her. She was nervous and upset, and the members thought she was guilty of deliberately copying the Canby story. While Mr. Anagnos later maintained that he always believed in her innocence, Helen was sad to sense a definite change in his attitude whenever she was in his presence afterward. For a long while, Helen felt she had to question every one of her “original” ideas. “I am not sure it is mine,” she said.

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