author
Adele M. Jewel
1834–1921
A rare 19th-century autobiographical voice, her writing tells a deeply personal story of deafness, hardship, travel, and survival. Her short memoir stands out for its honesty and for the glimpse it gives into everyday life on the margins of America.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in 1834, Adele M. Jewel was a deaf American writer best known for her autobiographical pamphlet A brief narrative of the life of Mrs. Adele M. Jewel (being deaf and dumb), published in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1869. Library and catalog records consistently identify her as the author of that work, and later references connect her with the names Adele George, Jewel, and Kerr.
Her memoir was written as both life story and appeal for support. Contemporary descriptions of the book say she presented it to the traveling public in hopes of earning money for herself and her invalid mother. Modern scholarship also treats the narrative as an unusually valuable account of the life of a lower-class deaf woman in 19th-century America.
Jewel's work remains important less for its size than for its perspective. In a brief space, she left behind a firsthand record of disability, poverty, faith, and determination—one that still gives readers a direct, human sense of a life that might otherwise have been lost to history.