New Releases by Germaine Greer

It''s time to rethink rape. Centuries of different approaches to rape - as inflicted by men on women - have got us nowhere. Rape statistics remain intractable: one woman in five will experience sexual violence. Very few rapes find their way into court. The crucial issue is consent, thought by some to be easy to establish and by others impossible. Sexual assault does not diminish; relations between the sexes do not improve; litigation balloons. In ON RAPE Germaine Greer argues there has to be a better way.

ON RAGE is Germaine Greer''s timeless essay about Aboriginal dispossession. With characteristic acuity and passion, Greer looks to the causes of rage and its consequences in Indigenous Australians. Originally published six months after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd''s Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008, this is an urgent and provocative examination of disempowerment by one of Australia''s leading polemicists.

A feminist academic and journalist describes her quest to rehabilitate an abandoned 60 hectares in southeast Queensland and reverse the effects of biodepletion caused by a century of logging, clearing and devastating the area. 25,000 first printing.

“Ferocious psychic need and volcanic energy drive this combined memoir, detective story and travelogue” from the author of The Female Eunuch (The New Yorker). After her father died, influential feminist writer and public intellectual Germaine Greer realizes how little she knows about him. She decides to track the life of her father, an Australian intelligence officer during World War II, to uncover the roots of his secrecy and distance. As she painstakingly assembles the jigsaw pieces of the past, Greer discovers surprising secrets about her father, her family, and herself. During her three-year quest, Greer travels from England to Australia, Tasmania, India, and Malta; searches through scores of genealogical, civil, and military archives; and delves into the memories of the men and women who may—or may not—have known Reg Greer. Yet the heart of her “lyrical but brutal elegy” is her own emotional journey, as the startling facts behind her father’s façade force her to painfully examine her own notions of truth and loyalty, family and obligation (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). “Anyone who has done this kind of search will identify with Ms. Greer’s frustration, admire her persistence, laugh at her accuracy and rejoice in her discoveries.” —The New York Times Book Review “The deeply affecting climax is a remarkable feat of family reconstruction.” —Publishers Weekly

Thirty years after the publication of The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer is back with the sequel she vowed never to write. "A marvelous performance--. No feminist writer can match her for eloquence or energy; none makes [us] laugh the way she does."--The Washington Post In this thoroughly engaging new book, the fervent, rollicking, straight-shooting Greer, is, as ever, "the ultimate agent provocateur" (Mirabella). With passionate rhetoric, outrageous humor, and the authority of a lifetime of thought and observation, she trains a sharp eye on the issues women face at the turn of the century. From the workplace to the kitchen, from the supermarket to the bedroom, Greer exposes the innumerable forms of insidious discrimination and exploitation that continue to plague women around the globe. She mordantly attacks "lifestyle feminists" who blithely believe they can have it all, and argues for a fuller, more organic idea of womanhood. Whether it''s liposuction or abortion, Barbie or Lady Diana, housework or sex work, Greer always has an opinion, and as one of the most brilliant, glamorous, and dynamic feminists of all time, her opinions matter. For anyone interested in the future of womanhood, The Whole Woman is a must-read.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year A polemical, ground-breaking study of Elizabethan England that reclaims Ann Hathaway’s rightful place in history. Little is known about the wife of the world’s most famous playwright; a great deal, none of it complimentary, has been assumed. The omission of her name from Shakespeare’s will has been interpreted as evidence that she was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake from which Shakespeare did well to distance himself. Yet Shakespeare is above all the poet of marriage. Before him, there were few comedies or tragedies about wooing or wedding. And yet he explored the sacrament in all its aspects, spiritual, psychological, sexual, sociological, and was the creator of some of the most tenacious and intelligent heroines in English literature. Is it possible, therefore, that Ann, who has been mocked and vilified by scholars for centuries, was the inspiration? Until now, there has been no serious critical scholarship devoted to the life and career of the farmer’s daughter who married England’s greatest poet. Part biography, part history, Shakespeare’s Wife is a fascinating reconstruction of Ann’s life, and an illuminating look at the daily lives of Elizabethan women, from their working routines to the rituals of courtship and the minutiae of married life. In this thoroughly researched and controversial book, Greer steps off the well-trodden paths of orthodoxy, asks new questions, and begins to right the wrongs done to Ann Shakespeare.

This publication documents the exhibition Stella Vine: Paintings, the first major solo show in the UK by the enfant terrible of British art. Stella Vine''s paintings are exuberant, funny and irreverent. She is notorious for her portraits of Kate Moss and disturbing images of Princess Diana and the heroin victim Rachel Whitear, but she also paints her mother and her son from photographs and memory. Born in 1969 in Northumberland, Stella Vine studied painting part-time at Hampstead School of Art in 1999. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions in the UK and internationally, notably New Blood at the Saatchi Gallery in 2004 when she first came to public attention. Stella Vine currently lives and works in London. This fully illustrated publication accompanies the exhibition Stella Vine: Paintings held at Modern Art Oxford, July - September 2007.

Conventional wisdom has it that in visual culture the female body, not the male, is viewed as the primary object of desire. Germaine Greer argues that until the nineteenth century the image of the female body was not drawn from life but constructed on aesthetic principles. The naked body that was instead studied and portrayed with heart-stopping immediacy in hundreds of guises, most of them to some extent erotic, some of them sadistic, is that of the boy. In exploring the iconic ideal of the beautiful boy, Germaine Greer demolishes one of the last Western taboos. With over two hundred images drawn from the whole history of Western art, illustrating the vicissitudes of the beautiful male - as toy boy, virgin soldier, naked martyr or winged genius, angel or seducer, narcissist or worshipper - they are invited to appreciate boys in all their sensuality, spontaneity and vulnerability.

Germaine Greer examines Shakepeare''s plays in detail, showing how he dramatized moral and intellectual issues in such a way that his audience became dazzlingly aware of an imaginative dimension to daily life. She argues that as long as Shakespeare''s work remains central to English cultural life, it will retain the values which make it unique in the world.

If men and women are equally capable of genius, why have there been no female artists of the stature of Leonardo, Titian or Poussin? In seeking to answer this question, Germaine Greer introduces us to major but underestimated figures in the history of Western painting--Angelica Kauffmann, Natalia Goncharova, Suzanne Valadon, Berthe Morisot, Kathe Kö llwitz--and produces a brilliantly incisive and richly illustrated study. She explains the obstacles as both external and surmountable and internal and insurmountable in the race for achievement.

Balans van de ontwikkeling van het feminisme in de jaren sinds 1970, waarbij wordt gesteld dat de strijd voor vrijheid voor de vrouw is vervangen door het streven naar gelijkheid met de man en de ontkenning en onderwaardering van het vrouwelijke.

Written by a renowned scholar and broadcaster, this account of Wilmot''s work strives to place it in its socio-political context and describe the way the poet and his work were co-opted after his premature death to serve contrasting political agendas.

"Based in part on a previously published work, this book takes the theme of women and literature and looks at the woman poet." - COPAC.

Always strong and fearless, Germaine Greer strikes right at the heart of the matter--be it John F. Kennedy and vaginal deodorants, rape and artificial insemination, cosmetic surgery, the death of Jimi Hendrix, or the famine in Ethiopia. This collection represents a mosaic of essays, long and short, some of which are appearing for the first time in print and all of which chafe the conventional and are bristling with argument. From the youthful liveliness of her sixties pieces, which "got up everybody''s nose," to the depth and complexity of her later work, The Madwoman''s Underclothes is a reflection both of an era and of the changing ideas and styles of Germaine Greer: "The essays on Brazil, Cuba, and Ethiopia represent my coming of age. Something like a coherent system of values is beginning to emerge after my years of wandering, although I have certainly not arrived at a set of articles of faith, and never will, I hope." Greer''s opinions on social, political, and sexual trends and mores are tendered in her unique fashion--outspoken, with rapier wit and no tolerance for narrow-mindedness. But as explosive, angry, and often funny as these essays are, they also reveal tenderness and sadness and that emotion that underlies all of Greer''s work--passionate commitment.

Index cards containing information on the Greer family tree, compiled during research for the book ''Daddy we hardly knew you'' (1990)