The author Germaine Greer (born 1939) was born in Australia and lived in England. The publication of her book The Female Eunuch in 1970 established her as a writer and as an authoritative commentator on women's liberation and sexuality.

Germaine Greer was born on January 29, 1939, in Melbourne, Victoria, and was educated at the Star of the Sea Convent, Gardenvale. Her father was a newspaper executive and she came from a middle class background. She completed an honors arts degree at Melbourne University in 1959 and a master's degree with first class honors at Sydney University in 1962 before going as a Commonwealth Scholar to Newnham College, Cambridge, where in 1967 she wrote her doctorate on Shakespeare's early comedies.

In 1970 the publication of The Female Eunuch made her a public figure in the United States, Australia, Britain, and Europe (where it was widely translated) and identified her with the new women's liberation movement which...