At least, that's one version of Le Morte D'Arthur's origin. Another is that the real author of the King Arthur books was an ordinary, law-abiding knight from Yorkshire. Historical facts aside, I know which version I find more compelling, and I suspect I'm not alone.
What's so fascinating about the writer as prisoner? With Sir Thomas Malory, it's probably the stark contrast between the violent criminal and the image of the writer as solitary creator. It's what might be called the Tony Soprano Syndrome--we're fascinated by a brigand's sensitive side.
In other cases, an author's imprisonment brings into sharp focus the threat of political oppression and censorship. The French writer Voltaire served 11 months in the Bastille because his satire insulted an aristocrat. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent a decade in prison for writing a private letter criticizing the Soviet government. Issues regarding the criminalization of speech persist to this day, certainly under repressive regimes outside the United States, and even here at home, though fortunately in far less virulent forms. I explore an example of this in my own novel Corrupt Practices, in which one of the characters faces jail because she distributed on the Internet allegedly obscene stories that contained only words, not images. My fictional obscenity prosecution is grounded in fact--as recently as 2006, the Bush administration relied on a 1970 United States Supreme Court case to prosecute an individual for criminal obscenity based on text-only stories. The legal issue in the case was never decided, and the question whether pure words can be criminally obscene remains open.
While this legal issue hasn't been decided yet, other crimes undoubtedly lead to prison--like embezzlement, passport fraud, and illegal drug possession. In Corrupt Practices, Richard Baxter is suddenly charged with those crimes and jailed without bail after a powerful Los Angeles church--which many consider a cult--accuses him of stealing millions in church funds to support his lavish lifestyle and crystal meth habit. His lawyer Parker Stern rushes to the federal detention center, where he finds Baxter a frightened, broken man who proclaims his innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt. Fortunately, my description of the federal jail was based on observations as an attorney and not on experience as an inmate. That being said, some of our greatest authors have served time in jails and prisons, and that experience often informs their work. Their stories of redemption, recidivism, or bravery in the face of utter despair are what intrigue us and draw us in.
Here's a list of writers who were sentenced to serve time behind bars, including some usual and some not so usual suspects.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The author of classics The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray
brought a criminal libel suit against his lover’s father, who’d accused
Wilde of homosexuality. The move backfired—after Wilde withdrew his
case, he was arrested and convicted of “gross indecency” and sentenced
to two years hard labor. During his incarceration, he wrote the epistle De Profundis, which traces his spiritual growth that resulted from his imprisonment.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
A
tax collector, Cervantes was imprisoned at least twice for fiscal
irregularities. During the second incarceration, he began his
masterpiece Don Quixote, the first part of which was published in 1605.
Chester Himes (1909-1984)
The author of If He Hollers Let Him Go and Cotton Comes to Harlem served seven-and-a-half years in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery. While in prison, he began writing short stories, eventually
earning the respect of prison guards and other inmates and in that way
shielding himself from violence. His brief tenure as a Hollywood
screenwriter was cut short when Warner Brothers chief Jack Warner, using
the most offensive of racial epithets, fired him because he was African
American. Himes’s crime fiction has been compared favorably to that of
Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Jim Thompson.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Accused
of reading and circulating essays critical of the government, the great
Russian writer was sentenced to death by firing squad, saved only by
the Czar’s last-minute commutation of the sentence to four years in a
Siberian labor camp. While in prison, he began his novella Notes from Underground, described by some as the first existentialist novel.
Jack London (1876-1916)
The author of Call of the Wild and White Fang influenced Ernest Hemingway, among others. In a chapter called “Pinched” from his 1907 book The Road,
London describes his “trial” on vagrancy charges: “The bailiff said,
‘Vagrancy, your honor,’ and I began to talk. But the judge began talking
at the same time, and he said, "Thirty days." I started to protest, but
at that moment his honor was calling the name of the next hobo on the
list. His honor paused long enough to say to me, ‘Shut up!’” London
spent 30 days in the Eric County Penitentiary, an experience that transformed his later writings.
Joan Henry (1914-2001)
A relative of two prime ministers and cousin of philosopher Betrand
Russell, this author and playwright spent eight months in prison for
passing fraudulent checks. Based on her experiences, she wrote Who Lie In Gaol, an exposé of substandard prison conditions. The book became a bestseller and was later made into a movie titled The Weak and the Wicked. Her later writing also focused on the criminal justice system. 
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
As punishment for his political pamphleteering, the author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders
was sentenced to an indefinite term in London’s Newgate prison. He also
spent three days in the public pillory. Legend has it that, instead of
rotten eggs and dead animals, the crowd threw roses as him at a result
of reading his poem Hymn to the Pillory. 
Jack Henry Abbott (1944-2002)
While in prison for armed robbery and the killing of another inmate, Jack Abbott wrote the critically acclaimed In the Belly of the Beast,
a book consisting of letters to author Norman Mailer. Mailer helped
Abbott win parole, but only six weeks after his release, Abbott stabbed a
man to death and was convicted of manslaughter. A second book written
in prison was unsuccessful. While still in prison, Abbot committed
suicide.
William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) (1862-1910)
Sentenced
to five years in prison for embezzlement, he had fourteen short stories
under several pseudonyms published while in prison. He also served as
the prison pharmacist.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (b. 1950)
Better
known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Libby was
sentenced in 2007 to 30 months in federal prison for obstruction of
justice, perjury, and making false statements in connection with the
outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. Because President Bush commuted
his sentence, he actually never served jail time, though many believe he
should have. Libby is the author of one novel, called The Apprentice (1996), which was reissued in 2005 in the wake of Libby’s indictment. The Associated Press described the novel as “a thriller set in Japan that includes references to bestiality, pedophilia and rape."
John Cleland (1709-1789)
While in debtors’ prison, Cleland wrote Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill).
Upon his release, Cleland was arrested for obscenity, after which he
disavowed the novel. It would not be legally published again for over a
hundred years. However, illegal, pirated copies continued to be
circulated.
Nelson Algren (1909-1981)
Winner of the National Book award for his novel The Man With the Golden Arm,
as a young man Algren spent five months in jail for stealing a
typewriter on which he’d been writing fiction. The experienced informed
his later writing—he was described as “the poet of the jail and the
whorehouse.”
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