Germaine Greer (b. 1939), writer, critic and academic, is the author of the influential feminist book, The Female Eunuch (1970), which examines the ways in which passivity in women has been encouraged. The book was a sensation; it has never been out of print since it was first published, has been translated into twelve languages and has sold over one million copies. Born in Melbourne, Greer gained a BA (Hons) from Melbourne University in 1959, an MA with first-class honours from Sydney University in 1963 and a PhD from Cambridge University in 1968. She has not lived in Australia since the 1960s, but remains one of the country's best-known expatriates. For nearly 40 years she has been an international academic and media personality and a truculent spokesperson on women's issues; thousands of fans and foes await her next provocative pronouncement. While her academic specialisation is sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature, her diverse books include The Obstacle Race (1979), about women painters; Sex and Destiny (1984), about the politics of fertility; Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989), an autobiography; The Change (1991), about menopause; The Whole Woman (1999), returning to the subject of feminism; and The Beautiful Boy (2003), about the representation of boys in art. White Beech (2013) is an account of her efforts to restore rainforest vegetation to a one-time dairy farm in southern Queensland. The Germaine Greer Archive at the University of Melbourne contains Greer's great collection of papers, documenting her work from 1959 to 2010 and including a rich trove of letters.
