A former politician and leading Marxist theoretician, Djilas wrote a lengthy study of Njegoš's life and works in the late 1950s while serving a prison sentence after a row with Yugoslavia's communist leadership. The manuscript was smuggled out of the prison by Djilas' associates in the early 1960s and taken to the West, where it was edited, translated from the original Serbo-Croatian into English, and published under the title "Njegoš: Poet, Prince, Bishop", in 1966. The book remains the only English-language biography of Njegoš, and the subsequent Serbo-Croatian edition (1988) is likely the most extensive study of his life in that language, as well. Djilas himself was a great admirer of Njegoš, and later recounted that "Gorski vijenac" was the only text that he always carried by his side during the Second World War.