 In January 1798 Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman . Although Godwin felt that he was portraying his wife with love , compassion , and sincerity , many readers were shocked that he would reveal Wollstonecraft 's illegitimate children , love affairs , and suicide attempts . The Romantic poet Robert Southey accused him of " the want of all feeling in stripping his dead wife naked " and vicious satires such as The <unk> 'd Females were published . Godwin 's Memoirs portrays Wollstonecraft as a woman deeply invested in feeling who was balanced by his reason and as more of a religious sceptic than her own writings suggest . Godwin 's views of Wollstonecraft were perpetuated throughout the nineteenth century and resulted in poems such as " Wollstonecraft and Fuseli " by British poet Robert Browning and that by William Roscoe which includes the lines : 
