When the world was forced to stay indoors, creative minds turned the silence into a symphony of brilliance. From literary giants to scientific pioneers, the top 10 great quarantine feats proved that a little isolation can spark monumental achievements. Below, we count down the most remarkable works born from lockdown, each a testament to human resilience and imagination.
Why the Top 10 Great Quarantine Works Matter
10 Eugene Onegin
Alexander Pushkin occupies Russia’s literary throne just as Shakespeare does England’s. His magnum opus, the verse novel Eugene Onegin (1832), tells the tale of a pampered aristocrat drifting through Saint Petersburg’s glittering ballrooms before retreating to his late uncle’s country manor. There, he encounters the poet Vladimir Lensky and the captivating Tatyana Larina, whose love becomes his obsession.
Pushkin, a dandy much like his fictional hero, often turned to his pen when illness struck—most frequently an affliction of the venereal sort. In the autumn of 1830, a fierce cholera outbreak in Moscow drove him to his family’s rural estate. While practicing a form of early social distancing, he completed Eugene Onegin along with several other classics, sealing his legacy as Russia’s unrivaled bard.
The novel later inspired Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to craft an opera in 1879, cementing its place in both literary and musical canons. Pushkin’s ability to transform a period of forced isolation into enduring art showcases the power of quarantine to fuel creativity.
9 Samuel Pepys’s Diary
Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) wore many hats: Member of Parliament, civil administrator for the English Navy, and, most famously today, meticulous diarist. From 1660 to 1669 he kept a daily record that now serves as a primary source for the English Restoration, offering vivid insight into the era’s politics, culture, and everyday life.
When the bubonic plague ravaged London in 1665, Pepys was unsurprised; he had witnessed a similar “black death” outbreak in Amsterdam two years prior. In June of that year he scribbled, “[To] my great trouble, hear that the plague is come into the City,” followed by a pious plea, “God preserve us all.”
Pepys’s diligent chronicling gave historians a clear picture of how the disease spread so swiftly, linking the catastrophe to a massive rat infestation in the squalid city. His diary remains an invaluable window into the human experience of quarantine.
8 Alexander The False Prophet
Lucian, a celebrated wit of the Roman Empire, hailed from Samosata—now in modern Turkey. As a playwright, satirist, and rhetorician, he delighted audiences by mocking cultural quirks, from Greek‑Syrian rivalries to stoic philosophy. One of his notable works, Alexander the False Prophet, skewered the era’s fascination with magic and the desperate search for supernatural cures.
The titular Alexander was a genuine figure, Alexander of Abonoteichus, who claimed magical powers capable of healing the sick. His notoriety swelled during the Antonine Plague of AD 165, a devastating epidemic that swept the Roman world. Greek physician Galen identified the disease—likely measles or smallpox—originating from China and traveling along the Silk Road.
While many Romans either isolated themselves or chased mystical remedies, Lucian chose satire, exposing the charlatan’s falsehoods and highlighting how fear can breed superstition during a pandemic.
7 The Magic Mountain
Considered a masterpiece of German literature, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain debuted in 1924. The narrative follows Hans Castorp, a young Hamburg merchant who visits his cousin Joachim at a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium nestled in the Alps. What begins as a brief stay spirals into an extended sojourn as Hans’s health wavers and he encounters a cast of patients embodying post‑World War I Europe’s societal decay.
Mann’s intimate knowledge of sanatorium life stemmed from personal experience. His wife, Katia, battled tuberculosis, prompting them to spend time at a Davos‑Platz health resort in 1912. Over the years, the couple frequented spas worldwide, granting Mann firsthand insight into the atmosphere that would become the novel’s setting.
The novel’s rich tapestry of illness, introspection, and cultural critique emerged from Mann’s own periods of isolation, demonstrating how quarantine can nurture profound literary reflection.
6 Dashiell Hammett
American novelist Dashiell Hammett grew up in a devout Catholic farming family in Maryland, quickly abandoning school at thirteen to mingle with gamblers, prostitutes, and thieves across Baltimore and Philadelphia. Seeking redemption, he enlisted with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1915, serving as a private eye until 1922.
After his detective stint, Hammett turned to writing detective fiction, drawing upon his gritty experiences to craft iconic sleuths like Sam Spade and the Continental Op. Yet his literary career might never have ignited if not for a bout of tuberculosis contracted while serving in the U.S. Army during World War I.
The army deemed him 25 percent disabled, granting a medical discharge and a modest pension. This financial safety net, combined with a part‑time copywriting job, afforded Hammett the time—and the frequent coughing fits—to pen stories that would define the hard‑boiled genre.
5 Anton Chekhov
Like Pushkin before him, Russian writer Anton Chekhov found his creative spark amid Russia’s recurring cholera outbreaks. Between 1892 and 1899, he produced some of his most celebrated short stories, including “Ward No. 6” and “The Black Monk,” each probing the human condition with clinical precision.
Chekhov split his time between his Melikhovo estate, where he organized famine and cholera relief for local peasants, and his demanding career as a practicing physician. The dual roles amplified his empathy, informing the stark realism of his narratives.
Unfortunately, his health deteriorated, and by 1897 he could no longer practice medicine. Like Hammett, Chekhov succumbed to tuberculosis, passing away in 1904. Nonetheless, his oeuvre remains a cornerstone of world literature, much of it forged in the crucible of epidemic‑driven isolation.
4 Paradise Lost
English poet John Milton wore many hats: pamphleteer, philosopher, and Latin Secretary for England’s Commonwealth Council of State. Yet his enduring fame rests on the epic poem Paradise Lost, which dramatizes Satan’s rebellion and humanity’s fall from grace.
Milton’s later years were marked by blindness, forcing him to dictate the poem to family, friends, and amanuenses between 1652 and 1667. Complicating matters, the Milton family relocated to Chalfont St. Giles to escape the Great Plague of London in 1665‑66. It was within this quarantine‑induced refuge that Milton completed his magnum opus.
The epic’s profound theological and political themes emerged despite (or perhaps because of) the enforced seclusion, underscoring how adversity can sharpen artistic vision.
3 The Decameron
The Decameron stands as arguably the greatest literary work about a pandemic. Likely penned between 1348 and 1353, it chronicles ten young aristocrats who flee Florence’s Black Death by retreating to a country estate. There, they entertain each other by telling one hundred stories over several days.
The collection balances somber moral tales with ribald humor, reflecting the spectrum of human response to catastrophe. Boccaccio wrote in the Florentine vernacular, a language that would later evolve into standard Italian.
Having lived through the 14th‑century plague, Boccaccio escaped Florence’s devastation by traveling to Naples and other Italian cities. Though he avoided infection, he witnessed the Florentine outbreak firsthand in 1348, experiences that infused his storytelling with authenticity.
2 William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare’s life was punctuated by recurring plague epidemics. As an infant, he survived the 1564 outbreak that claimed many of his Stratford‑upon‑Avon neighbors. Biographer Jonathan Bate argues that the playwright’s recurring encounters with disease shaped his artistic trajectory.
The plague surfaces in several of Shakespeare’s masterpieces, notably Romeo and Juliet. Intriguingly, his most prolific period—1605‑06—coincided with a severe plague year in England. Rather than languish in despair, Shakespeare harnessed the enforced downtime to produce towering works such as King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra.
Scholars now believe that the societal pause forced by the epidemic provided Shakespeare the space and urgency to create, turning quarantine into a catalyst for his greatest artistic outpouring.
1 Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton, the English physicist and mathematician whose discoveries laid the groundwork for modern science, found his genius flourishing during a period of forced isolation. In 1665, while a modest student at Cambridge, the university shuttered its doors due to the Great Plague of London.
Returning home to his family’s countryside house, Newton seized the quiet to conduct a series of experiments that would revolutionize our understanding of motion and gravitation. It was within this self‑imposed quarantine that he first articulated the laws governing falling bodies and planetary orbits.
Rejoining Cambridge in 1667, Newton’s meteoric rise—from undergraduate to fellow and ultimately professor by 1669—was propelled by the insights cultivated during his solitary months. His story epitomizes how lockdown can incubate breakthroughs that reshape civilization.