Samuel Butler (late 19thc) had a theory that the Odyssey was written by a woman. I finally looked this up -- it's not just a theory but an entire manuscript. He's very idiosyncratic, and a lot of his points I don't particularly agree with (for instance I find Fitzgerald's beautiful reading of the recognition scene between Odysseus and Penelope, around the moment when Odysseus' old nurse gives him a bath, to be much more convincing than Butler's). But nonetheless his sensibility is very enjoyable. It's not just that he thinks it's a woman, by the way: he thinks it's Nausicaa.

Without passing judgment on the project, thought others might enjoy if I posted some quotes, chosen somewhat at random:

"When Helen mixes Nepenthe with the wine which was to be handed round to Menelaus, Telemachus, and Pisistratus, we learn its virtues to be so powerful that a man could not weep during all the day on which he had drunk it, not even though he had lost both his father and his mother, or had seen a brother or a son cut to pieces before his eyes (iv. 220-226). From the order in which these relationships present themselves to the writer's mind I opine that her father and mother were the most important persons in her world, and hence that she was still young and unmarried."

"A man who was speaking of my theory that the "Odyssey" was written by a woman as a mere mauvaise plaisanterie, once told me it was absurd, for the first thing a woman would have thought of after the suitors had been killed was the dining room carpet. I said that mutatis mutandis this was the very thing she did think of."

"When Ulysses and Penelope are in bed (xxiii. 300-343) and are telling their stories to one another, Penelope tells hers first. I believe a male writer would have made Ulysses’ story come first and Penelope's second."

http://www.archive.org/details/authoressofodyss00butlrich