Miguel de Cervantes, author of "Don Quixote"

It is more usual to celebrate the birth dates of famous people than their baptism dates, but sometimes this is not possible. It is not known exactly when Miguel de Cervantes was born, but we do know that he was baptised on 9^th October 1547 in a small town about 20 miles from Madrid, Spain.

His claim to fame is that he penned the first prose work in Europe to which the name “novel” can reliably be assigned, namely “Don Quixote”. This is a tale that pokes fun at the traditional “knightly romance” in that its hero, a gentleman of mature years who reads too much, sets off on adventures that turn out to have consequences other than those intended. It is a “modern” novel in the sense that it contrasts the world of imagination with that of reality, a theme that has been a familiar one in literature ever since.

Although Don Quixote is not an autobiography, there is surely quite a lot of the creator in his hero. Unfortunately, the details of Cervantes’ early life are very sketchy. It is, however, known that he came from a very poor background and that he was a soldier at the age of 24, because this was when he fought in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and was seriously injured.

During the battle, which was fought at sea between the Christian nations of Europe and the Ottoman Turks, Cervantes received three bullet wounds, one of which disabled his left arm. Despite this handicap he continued his military career after he left hospital and, in 1575, was captured by Algerian pirates and held as a slave in north Africa for five years until his parents could raise the ransom that was demanded for his release.

On his return to Spain, Cervantes decided to use his functioning right hand as his means of earning a living and switched from soldiering to writing. His early works were mainly plays and poems, before he hit on the idea of Don Quixote.

The first part of his magnum opus appeared in 1605, when Cervantes was already 58 years old. It was a success from the start, which caused problems for Cervantes because pirated editions soon appeared (there being no copyright laws at the time), as did a spurious “second part”. This inspired Cervantes to continue Quixote’s adventures in an official Part Two, which was published in 1615, shortly before Cervantes died in 1616.

Don Quixote was soon translated into other languages, with the first English edition of Part One appearing in 1612. It became very popular across Europe and the wider world, and is widely regarded as one of the “all time greats” of world literature.

© John Welford