Walden is an autofiction born from a commercial failure

Walden or Life in the Woods is a work by Thoreau that falls under autofiction and not a classic autobiography. This literary essay served as a narcissistic restoration for the writer to compensate for the failure of his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The latter had only found buyers for 300 copies, pushing the author to reinvent himself under various masks.