From the initial avalanche of mail triggered by Germaine Greer’s book The Female Eunuch grew a collection of 50 years of letters, emails, faxes, telegrams and newsletters from academics, schoolchildren, radicals and housewives all over the world. They’re now stored in 120 grey, acid-free boxes at the University of Melbourne Archives.

Lachlan Glanville, assistant archivist of the Germaine Greer Archive at the University of Melbourne has pored over these letters.

In the latest episode of Essays On Air, the audio version of our Friday essay series, Glanville says the collection offers a powerful, often amusing, sometimes perplexing glimpse into the lives of the people affected by her work, as well as the many faces of Greer herself – academic, feminist, provocateur, confidant.

Today, Conversation editor Lucinda Beaman reads Glanville’s fascinating essay, Reading Germaine Greer’s mail.

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Additional audio

Snow by David Szesztay

Dreaming in the Non-Dream by Chris Forsyth and the Solar Motel Band

Germaine Greer interview (1999)

TV Heaven 1971 - Germaine Greer - The Female Eunuch

This episode was edited by Jenni Henderson. Illustration by Marcella Cheng.