Memoirs of Leonora Christina, Daughter of Christian IV. of Denmark

Memoirs of Leonora Christina is the autobiographical Jammers Minde (Memory of Woes) by Leonora Christina Ulfeldt (1621-1698), the Danish princess and writer who spent twenty-two years imprisoned in the Blue Tower of Copenhagen Castle from 1663 to 1685 before her release.

Leonora Christina was a daughter of King Christian IV of Denmark by his morganatic second wife Kirsten Munk. She married Corfitz Ulfeldt, the powerful Lord High Steward of Denmark who fell from political favor in the 1650s and went into exile. Leonora Christina followed her husband through various European courts including Sweden, France, and England across the difficult years of his political fall. When she returned to Denmark in 1663 after his death to claim outstanding debts owed by the Danish crown, she was arrested and imprisoned in the Blue Tower without formal trial.

She wrote her memoirs during the long imprisonment, recording her life and providing a wide account of seventeenth century Danish royal and political life. The manuscript was not published until 1869 but has since become one of the central documents of Danish literary and historical tradition.