AustLit

Germaine Greer was born in Melbourne and schooled at the Star of the Sea Convent. She matriculated to the University of Melbourne in 1956, then, after the award of her BA in 1959, she went to the University of Sydney to work on an MA. Her thesis on Byron earned her a Commonwealth scholarship in 1964 which she used to finance further study at Cambridge University. In 1968 she was awarded a PhD for her thesis on Shakespeare. By this time she had accepted a lectureship at the University of Warwick.

Throughout her education, Greer frequently challenged the social mores of Australian culture. Her stature, her intelligence and her ribald language intimidated her fellow students, making her a dominant presence in student life. She honed this presence as a reputable actress, eventually earning the distinction of becoming the first female member of Cambridge's famous Footlights Club. Her forthright opinions on sexuality and her objections to the patriarchal society in which she lived were often expressed publicly and sometimes found expression in various periodicals, but, after some encouragement, she collected these thoughts and wrote The Female Eunuch (1971). While the ideas in the book have been criticised by some hard-line feminists, her radical analysis of sexual stereotypes is widely regarded as one of the most important feminist documents in recent history. The popularity of the book in Europe and the United States of America made her an instant celebrity. She participated in many debates during the 1970s, including one famous encounter with Norman Mailer, and continued to write on issues first explored in her ground-breaking book. The reversal of some of these ideas in Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984) drew criticism, but the publication of The Whole Woman (1999), touted by the publisher as a sequel to The Female Eunuch, shows that she remains a prominent voice in the ongoing feminist debate.

While the book most closely connected to Australian culture is her autobiography, Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989), Greer has also published widely in the fields of politics, indigenous affairs and culture; these works include her 2003 publication, The Boy, which traces art's obsession with male beauty and the figure of 'the boy' from ancient Greek times to the present in Western art. Greer also researched the life of Ann Hathaway and wrote, Shakespeare's Wife: The Life and Time of Ann Hathaway (2007). Greer has also been a columnist for UK newspapers and, in 2012, she began publishing a regular column in the Saturday Age.

In addition to her career as an author, Greer has held several lectureships at universities in England and the United States, following her first lectureship at the University of Warwick. She returned to the University of Warwick in the late 1990s as Professor of English and Comparative Studies.