Don Quixote (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Cervantes was born in Alcalé de Henares on September 19, 1547. Little is known about his early childhood, other than that it was an itinerant existence; his father, a barber-surgeon, was constantly moving his family from town to town to find work. It is assumed that Cervantes's education was minimal although he does seem to have received some education from the Jesuits in Seville.

In 1569, his teacher, López de Hoyos, published four of his poems in Madrid. Cervantes then traveled to Italy, possibly as a result of a duel with Don Antonio Sigura. In Rome, Cervantes served the Cardinal-elect Giulio Acquaviva. In 1571 he enlisted in the Spanish militia to fight for Don Juan of Austria against the Ottoman-Turks at Lepanto. During this battle, he received two bullets to the chest and one to his left hand, which left him permanently disabled. In 1572, he joined Don Juan's campaign to fight at Navarino, Corfu, and Tunis. Returning to Spain in 1575, he was captured by Algerian corsairs.

Cervantes fetched a high price for his captors. Cervantes, as is recorded in the Informacion (a document based on eyewitness testimony to refute his enemies and avoid the Spanish Inquisition), kept up the spirits of his fellow hostages. He tried unsuccessfully to lead them in several escapes. Finally, in 1580, Trinitarian friars paid his high ransom, probably collected from family and friends. Now free, he returned to Spain a great hero. Despite his fame, he was without a job and his family was destitute.

He was unsuccessful as a playwright, because he was unable to compete with the monopoly of Lope de Vega. He wrote poems, but that brought in little money. His only child, Isabel de Saavedra, was the result of an affair with an actress named Ana Franca de Rojas. In 1584, he married a young woman, Catalina de Salazar y Palacios.

In 1585 Cervantes published La Galatea. He became a commissary agent, then a tax collector. Since his salary was often late, he made money by lending out his tax collections at interest. When such a transaction went bad, he was investigated. This landed him in jail several times. During one such jail term in 1597 he conceived of the story that became Don Quixote.

With the publication of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, Cervantes became famous around the world. Although inadequate copyright protection robbed him of riches, patrons enabled him to settle in Madrid and write more novels. His last works included the second part of the Don Quixote saga and Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, completed three days before he died in April 1616.