Germaine Greer's title is taken from a jeering reference by Pope to women writers, and her aim, or thesis, appears to be that the Female Muse has been downgraded and misunderstood and now needs a new, [radical definition. (The subtitle is Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet). She [starts with Sappho, of whom only one ode and various fragments survive, and of whom virtually nothing is reliably known - though the Ancient World celebrated her as "The Tenth Muse". She maintains that the almost unknown Katharine Philips is a major writer of the Restoration period, and predictably there is a good deal about Aphra Behn, who has a mysterious side biographically.
Greer finds Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti both significant figures, though she scolds the latter for being her own odd, masochistic self. It is all quite lively and polemical, if you can stand up to the almost relentless tone of intellectual hectoring.