When British writer Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) died from complications following childbirth, her grieving widow William Godwin published a startlingly candid memoir of her life — which included two out-of-wedlock pregnancies and two suicide attempts over a failed relationship. These then-scandalous personal details effectively overshadowed her work for the better part of a century. With the rise of the feminist movement, however, her 1792 treatise A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN has been properly recognized as one of the first works of feminist philosophy.