Miguel de Cervantes
1 book analyzed
Biography
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) lived a life that would embarrass a novelist for being too eventful. He fought at the Battle of Lepanto (1571) against the Ottoman fleet, was wounded, lost the use of his left hand, spent five years as a slave in Algiers after his ship was captured by Barbary pirates, was ransomed by his family and the Trinitarian friars, returned to Spain, failed as a playwright, worked as a government provisioner supplying the Armada, was excommunicated twice for requisitioning Church property, was imprisoned twice for accounting irregularities, and wrote Part I of Don Quixote — possibly while in prison in Seville. He died in April 1616, one day before Shakespeare, having received no significant recognition or financial reward from the book that would become the most translated work in the Western canon after the Bible.