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Did Miguel de Cervantes begin planning Don Quixote while in prison?

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Engraving of Miguel de Cervantes, shown with a mustache and beard, wearing a ruffled collar and cloak, based on works by Gregorio Ferro and Fernando Selma. — Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes, engraving by E. Mackenzie after Gregorio Ferro and Fernando Selma; from *The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography* (1863).

It is widely believed that Miguel de Cervantes may have conceived the idea for his masterpiece, Don Quixote, while he was imprisoned in the Crown Jail of Sevilla in 1597.1

This possibility is supported by a remark found in the prologue to the first part of the novel, where Cervantes writes:

And so, what was to be expected of a sterile and uncultivated wit such as that which I possess if not an offspring that was dried up, shriveled, and eccentric: a story filled with thoughts that never occurred to anyone else, of a sort that might be engendered in a prison where every annoyance has its home and every mournful sound its habitation?1

While he was confined in the jail until April 1598, the actual writing of the first part of the novel took place over the following years as he moved between locations such as Esquivias, Madrid, and Valladolid.1