According to common stereotypes, people who go to prison live according to their own laws. They have their own circle of interests, and it does not include the works of world classics of literature.
But our life is much more interesting and diverse, and does not fit into stereotypical thinking. Many famous writers went to jail and wrote in conclusion books that later became classics.
10. Thomas Mallory
Not much is known about his life. He lived in the 15th century. Born into a noble family, he was a knight and participated in the Scarlet and White Rose war. Thomas spent the last 20 years of his life in prison on a number of charges. There he wrote all his books.
It is not known whether he himself collected all the material, or whether he relied on the manuscripts of his predecessors. Mallory wrote books based on numerous legends and tales of King Arthur and other knights. He took French chivalric novels as a model, but English works are felt in his works.
He wrote 21 books that were later published and are still considered works that contain all the famous legends about King Arthur.
9. Tommaso Campanella
The future writer was born into the family of an illiterate shoemaker. A boy with extraordinary abilities was noticed, he was able to receive a spiritual education. But he did not like monastic rules, and besides, he became interested in magic and mysticism. Tommaso decided to leave the monastery and began wandering around Italy.
He was arrested more than once, and because of suspicions of heresy he was sentenced to abdication. But he did not calm down, tried to raise an uprising against the Spanish authorities. He was again arrested, tortured and wanted to be executed, but Campanella pretended to be insane.
The man was sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent 27 years in the prisons of Naples and wrote several treatises on astrology, philosophy, medicine, etc. His most famous book is The City of the Sun. Later he was able to leave the prison, he was patronized by the pope Urban VIII and Reshilier himself.
8. Marquis de Sade
He preached absolute freedom, believed that all his life a person should satisfy all his desires. The word “sadism” came from his name, which was first used as sexual satisfaction from pain and humiliation, and then acquired a broader meaning.
Despite the fact that he was wealthy and of a noble family, de Sade was tried and imprisoned for rape. After spending some time in prison, he went out, paying a fine.
But he was soon convicted of the “Marseille affair”, namely, sodomy and poisoning (the use of unhealthy exciting sweets) and sentenced to death, but was able to escape. He hid in his family estate. Soon again, he abducted 3 girls to rape them.
After a series of such scandals, he still found himself in prison, where he was treated very cruelly. De Sade began to write, created several pornographic novels and short stories. During the capture of the Bastille, where this marquis once sat, all of his manuscripts were destroyed, with the exception of the “120 Days of Sodom,” which was later published.
7. Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
He went to jail because consisted of a secret society that wanted to carry out a coup in Russia. After the arrest, he spent 8 months in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Dostoevsky denied his guilt, but was recognized as a criminal, after which he was sentenced to death.
Fedor and others were brought to Semyonov’s parade ground and read out the verdict to them, after which they reported a pardon. Convicts were sent to hard labor.
Dostoevsky did not own any craft, so he did all the hard work in hard labor, for example, carried a brick or unloaded the barges, standing in icy water. Dostoevsky later admits that it was there that he overestimated his whole life and changed his attitude.
6. Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky
He was a staunch revolutionary and, like others, suffered for his ideas. For compiling one of the proclamations he was arrested and kept in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The investigation dragged on for 1.5 years,
Chernyshevsky fought for his rights. In prison, he worked hard, wrote about 200 sheets of copyright text. Later, Nikolai Gavrilovich was sentenced to hard labor for 14 years, but Alexander II reduced this period to 7 years. The writer was supposed to stay in Siberia for life.
5. Oscar Wilde
His book "Portrait of Dorian Gray" has become a classic, it has been read and re-read by several generations of lovers of good literature.
The writer was married, he had 2 sons in marriage. But, having met Alfred Douglas, he fell in love with him and could not refuse him anything. Oscar spent a lot of money on a young lover, paid blackmailers who threatened to expose him. He transferred his passion to paper, telling about it in a novel, poems.
After several scandals, Wilde was charged with sodomy and violation of public morality. He was jailed. The court found the writer guilty and sentenced to 2 years of hard labor.
At first, he served his sentence in a prison intended for repeat offenders, and only then was transferred to another. The conclusion broke him. All friends turned their backs on Oscar, and his young lover never visited him, selling off the gifts of the writer and paying with this money for his life abroad.
The wife, in spite of everything, refused to divorce and visited him in prison. Even after her release, she handed him money and letters, but refused to meet with him. Wilde moved to France, where he continued to write, including articles with proposals for improving living conditions in prison.
4. Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
The Russian poet and prose writer suffered because of his political views. He wrote an anti-Stalinist epigram. Parsnip believed that this was a real suicide. Mandelstam was arrested and sent into exile in 1934. After 3 years, the term of exile ends, he and his wife return to Moscow.
A year later, he was again arrested, put in Butyrskaya prison. He was accused of anti-Soviet agitation, as well as of having moved to the capital, and after serving his sentence, he was forbidden to appear in Moscow. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison and sent to the Far East.
Mandelstam was very weak, he had health problems, he was emaciated, complained in letters that he was constantly freezing. In the same 1938, he died in a transit camp, he was 47 years old.
3. Danil Ivanovich Harms
Harms' books are still loved and read by children. But in 1931 he was arrested, because he participated in an anti-Soviet group of writers. He was sentenced to 3 years in correctional camps, but then the sentence was replaced by expulsion.
Danil Ivanovich moved to Kursk in the summer of 1932, but already in the fall he returned to Leningrad. In 1941, he was arrested due to the fact that he spread a defeatist mood. The text of the denunciation said that Harms did not believe in the victory of the USSR. He wrote that Leningrad would die a starvation or be bombed.
To avoid being shot, Harms decided to pretend to be crazy. He was transferred to the Crosses Prison Psychiatric Hospital, where he died of starvation in February 1942.
2. Vladimr Vladimirovich Mayakovsky
In Moscow, the young poet met revolutionary-minded students, read Marxist literature. From 1908 to 1909 he was arrested 3 times.
The first time in the case of an underground printing house. Then he was quickly released, because he was a minor, transferred to custody of his parents. Then he was charged with a group of expropriating archists. And also in organizing the escape of convicts from Novinsky Prison.
Mayakovsky was released due to lack of evidence. In Butyrka prison, he spent 11 months in solitary confinement. At this time, he read a lot, tried to write. He later said that it was the most important time for him.
1. Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
The Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature has suffered because of his political views. The war hero, who earned many awards, Solzhenitsyn nevertheless did not hide his critical attitude towards Stalin. He said that he distorted "Leninism" and created orders similar to serfdom. He wrote about this to an old friend.
Military censorship could not turn a blind eye to this. Alexander Isaevich was deprived of the rank of captain and sent to Lubyanka prison. He was sentenced to 8 years in forced labor camps, sent to eternal exile.
He changed many prisons, worked in a closed design bureau ("sharashka"), and was in Butyrskaya prison. He was imprisoned from 1945 to 1953, during which time he was completely disappointed in Marxism.