The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade relates the story of four wealthy men who enslave 24 mostly teenaged victims and sexually torture them while listening to stories told by old prostitutes. The book was written while Sade was imprisoned in the Bastille and the manuscript was lost during the storming of the Bastille. Sade wrote that he "wept tears of blood" over the manuscript's loss. Many consider this to be Sade crowing acheivment.
This week marks the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s eleven-day imprisonment in Birmingham Jail. The treatise he wrote there became an important touchstone for the American Civil Rights Movement. But this is only one of many great works written within the confines of a cell.