Confinement in the Tower of London has produced a variety of literary responses. Many prisoners have inscribed their names into the stone walls, often adding coats of arms or moral sentiments, as if the power of the written sign could vanquish "the miseri of this house" (an inscription by Thomas Clarke in 1576). Other inhabitants freed the word from the incarcerating stone: Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World was composed during imprisonment in the tower, as was Thomas More's Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, William Penn's No Cross, No Crown, and poetry by Robert Southwell, Chidiock Tichborne, and Charles, Duke of Orleans. To this list of "tower literature" should be added Elizabeth Tollet's Poems on Several Occasions (1724).

Tollet was not sent to the tower for political crimes or religious heresy; she lived there with her family. Her father, George Tollet, was appointed extra commissioner of the navy in...