Jeffrey Archer is quite a famous author and he was recently jailed for perjury. He has wrote a book called “A Prison Diary” about his experiences, but I wouldn’t believe a word of it ;).
He later became President of Ireland. Obviously, many would dispute whather he could be called a criminal. There is no shortage of books (mostly terrible) written by participants in the conflict in Ireland. They would all claim that they were not criminals.
If you’re willing to take the strictly technical definition of criminal, anything by Oscar Wilde would qualify.
Yes, but Malory was convicted, and the little we do know of him indicates that he was considered to be wild and nasty all around. A conviction is a hell of a lot more serious than an accusation. There are so many uncertainties about Chaucer’s involvement in the Champain case (including whether or not it was rape!) that old Geof deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Well, he was convicted of a crime; I don’t think that’s too technical a description of a criminal. Several of the other writers here, such as Eldridge Cleaver and Mumia Abu-Jamal, would also state their actions were political.
And it was Robert Erskine Childers’ son, Erskine Hamilton Childers, who was the President of Ireland several decades after his father’s execution.
Of course, you’re right about his son being President - I shouldn’t post too early in the morning. I fully agree that Childers Snr. fits the bill for the purposes of this thread. As I mentioned in my post about Oscar Wilde, he is a criminal in the strict technical sense but you wouldn’t generally refer to him as such.
The brilliant historian Marc Bloch wrote ‘The Historian’s Craft’ whilst imprisoned by the Germans (he was active in the French Resistance); it is still considered an extremely important work – he wrote it all from memory as he had no access to his notes or books or papers, obviously.
It ends in mid sentence as he was literally taken from his cell whilst writing, and out for his execution…
Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
P.S. to Surreal: It’s not illegal to remove the tag from your own mattress. It’s illegal for a retailer to remove the tag.
There was a guy named Paul who wrote a considerable chunk of the second half of the best-selling book of all time. He did time. A lot of it was on trumped-up charges, but still.
There was also a poet mentioned on Saturday Night Live many years ago, who wrote behind bars. I don’t remember his name, but some of his work still haunts me:
“Big dog barking …
Do he bite?
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
C-I-L-L my land. Lord.”
Powerful stuff.
Alexandr Solsynhitsyn (a thousand apologies for the horrible spelling) was imprisoned in Soviet gulags for many years, and he’s a gifted writer. Not sure if he’s the “criminal” you’re looking for, however.
See A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago, and Cancer Ward, among others.
Snicks
But it doesn’t compare to the classic:
Gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see
Gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see
Gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see
Then them whities ain’t gonna bother me
John Bunyan wrote some of The Pilgrim’s Progress while in jail.
I think it’s called “Hitman” by Sammy “The Bull” Gravano…he was the muscle for the Teflon Don in New York…really interesting reading…
D>
I saw that just the other day. I don’t see what all the fuss was about; it’s no more than average.
Nobody’s yet mentioned Mr Nice, the criminal biography of Britain’s biggest ever hash dealer Howard Marks. It’s quite the tale.
Will G Gordon Liddy
So can we also count RN: the Memoirs of Richard Nixon?
Mein Kampf, anyone?
Go Boy! Memories of a Life Behind Bars by Roger Caron
I read it a long time ago… I remember it being pretty good.
Chopper is a bit light, but a pretty good read. I’ll note that I file it with my fiction books rather than non-fiction, though.
Chopper II through to Chopper DCCLXVIII, however, aren’t worth the time.
Oh, yeah - and it’s ghostwritten.