- The Spanish novelist and dramatist Miguel de Cervantes (1547 - 1616) began his comic novel Don Quixote (published in 1605) in Seville Prison after he was jailed for debt in 1597.
- The English courtier, explorer, poet and historian Sir Walter Raleigh (c1552 - 1618) was sentenced to death in 1603 on a trumped up charge of treason against the new king, James I. He was reprieved, but not pardoned, at the last moment. Imprisoned in the Tower of London he wrote his History of the World. The unfinished work appeared in 1614 - while Raleigh was still in prison. He was released on parole in 1616 to lead an expedition to find gold in South America. But he was forced to turn back empty-handed after his men clashed with Spanish troops. On his return to England, he was arrested again on the earlier treason charge and executed in 1618.
- The English writer and preacher John Bunyan (1628 - 88) was jailed in 1675 for his Nonconformist religious teachings. During his six months in Bedford County Jail he wrote much of his religious allegory, Pilgrim's Progress, which was published in two parts in 1678 and 1684.
- The English writer John Cleland
(1709 - 89) was put in Newgate Prison in London for debt in 1749. While in jail he was offered 20 guineas ($32) by a publisher named Drybutter, to write a licentious novel. The result was Fanny Hill or the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1750), and the money Cleland received for it secured his release.
- The French satirist Voltaire (1694 - 1778) was jailed in 1717 for writing poems which ridiculed France's dissolute regent, the Duke of Orleans. During his 11 months in the Bastille, Paris, Voltaire started work on his epic poem La Henriade (1723), an attack on religious fanaticism and political intrigue.
- The American short story writer O. Henry (1862 - 1919) served three years and three months in the federal penetentiary in Columbus, Ohio, for embezzling funds while he had been a teller with the First National Bank. He wrote some of his best stories in his cell - including the collection he published in 1908 under the title The General Grafter.
- The British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1972) was jailed in London during the First World War for his pacifist writings. During his confinement, he wrote An Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (published in 1919). In the book he gave a simplified account of his classic work Principia Mathematica (1910 - 13) which had been written with the British mathematician A. E. Whitehead.
- The Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) wrote the first part of his autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) in jail. After the Munich Beer Hall putsch, an unsuccessful bid to seize power in 1923, he was jailed for nine months in Landsberg Fortress, and while there dictated the first part of his autobiography to his disciple, Rudolf Hess.
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