Carlyle worked on an earlier novel, Wotton Reinfred, which Macmechan refers to as "he first draft of "Sartor"." Carlyle finished seven chapters of the semi-autobiographical novel depicting a young man of deeply religious upbringing being scorned in love, and thereafter wandering. He eventually finds at least philosophical consolation in a mysterious stranger named Maurice Herbert, who invites Wotton into his home and frequently discusses speculative philosophy with him. At this point, the novel abruptly shifts to highly philosophical dialogue revolving mostly around Kant. Though the unfinished novel deeply impressed Carlyle's wife Jane, Carlyle never published it and its existence was forgotten until long after Carlyle's death. MacMechan suggests that the novel provoked Carlyle's frustration and scorn due to the "zeal for truth and his hatred for fiction" he speaks of in his letters of the time. Numerous parts of "Wotton" appear in the biographical section of "Sartor Resartus", in which Carlyle humorously sentences them to the bags containing Teufelsdröckh's autobiographical sketches, which the editor constantly complains are overly fragmented or derivative of Goethe. Though widely and erroneously reported as having been burned by Carlyle, the unfinished novel is still extant in draft form; several passages were moved verbatim to "Sartor Resartus", but with their context radically changed.