''Homer's Daughter'' is a 1955 novel by British author

Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were b ...

, famous for '' I, Claudius'' and ''

The White Goddess ''The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth'' is a book-length essay on the nature of poetic myth-making by the English writer Robert Graves. First published in 1948, it is based on earlier articles published in ''Wales'' magazine ...

''. The novel starts from the idea that

Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...

's ''

Odyssey The ''Odyssey'' (; ) is one of two major epics of ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest surviving works of literature and remains popular with modern audiences. Like the ''Iliad'', the ''Odyssey'' is divi ...

'' was written by a princess in the Greek settlements in

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

. The novel makes an entirely speculative reconstruction of who she was and why she wrote such a work. It has her modifying the legends that existed in her own time to partly match a crisis in her own life. The idea that a woman wrote the works of

was initially proposed by Samuel Butler, who developed the theory in ''The Authoress of the Odyssey''. Graves elaborated from Butler's theory in his novel. ''Homer's Daughter'' is not as famous as the Claudius novels, but has its admirers.

References

{{Robert Graves Novels by Robert Graves 1955 British novels Cassell (publisher) books Novels set in the 8th century BC