Buchanan composed his beautiful 'Paraphrases on the Psalms' while imprisoned in the cell of a Portuguese monastery.
Campanella, the Italian patriot monk, suspected of treason, was immured for twenty-seven years in a Neapolitan dungeon, during which, deprived of the sun's light, he sought higher light, and there created his 'Civitas Solis,' which has been so often reprinted and reproduced in translations in most European languages.

During his thirteen years' imprisonment in the Tower, Raleigh wrote his 'History of the World,' a project of vast extent, of which he was only able to finish the first five books.

Luther occupied his prison hours in the Castle of Wartburg in translating the Bible, and in writing the famous tracts and treatises with which he inundated all Germany.
It was to the circumstance of John Bunyan having been cast into gaol that we probably owe the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' He was thus driven in upon himself; having no opportunity for action, his active mind found vent in earnest thinking and meditation; and indeed, after his enlargement, his life as an author virtually ceased.

His 'Grace Abounding' and the 'Holy War' were also written in prison.

Bunyan lay in Bedford Gaol, with a few intervals of precarious liberty, during not less than twelve years; [217] and it was most probably to his prolonged imprisonment that we owe what Macaulay has characterised as the finest allegory in the world.
All the political parties of the times in which Bunyan lived, imprisoned their opponents when they had the opportunity and the power.