Feminist icon Germaine Greer's lifetime archive might have a $3 million price tag, but she says there's nothing inside that gossipmongers will find useful.
The University of Melbourne has bought the archive, filling more than 150 filing cabinet drawers, and will move it from Professor Greer's UK home in July.
The archive contains manuscripts of Greer's books, including notes and drafts from her best-selling work The Female Eunuch, and letters from family, friends, academics, critics and politicians.
Prof Greer, who started studying at the University of Melbourne 60 years ago, said it was an obvious decision for the archive to be housed at the university.
"The archive is not about me, but about the moment, about the people who wrote to me, about the reception of The Female Eunuch, about the way people understood issues that now seem so clear," she said on Monday.
Prof Greer said her agent had not moved on the selling of the archive for 20 years, so the expression of interest from the university came as a surprise.
"I am deeply touched that my great 180 drawers full of rubbish will come to you immaculately packaged and preserved and be looked after with great care," she said.
"There's not a lot in it that the gossipmongers will find useful.
"They may indeed discover that I am a much less interesting person than they thought I was."
She said the way people received The Female Eunuch in the 1970s was contemptuous and people had tried to humiliate her when the book was released.
The uni will ship, catalogue and digitise the archive, which will be used for student research and teaching purposes.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Glyn Davis said it was important the university could provide a permanent home for the archive.
"Professor Greer is one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th and early 21st century and she has made a formative contribution to feminist thought," Prof Davis said.
The university has so far raised $900,000 from donations and its own contribution to buy the archive.
Prof Greer will donate most of the sale proceeds to her charity The Friends of Gondwana Rainforest.
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