Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

1547 - 23rd April 1616

The son of a Spanish doctor, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born in 1547 in a town called Alcalá de Henares (now a suburb of modern Madrid).
During the 1560s Cervantes was taught by a famous Spanish humanist, Juan López de Hoyos, at a school in Madrid.

In 1570 he joined the Spanish army in the then-Spanish territory of Naples. He fought in the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571, part of a war between Christian Europe and Islamic Turkey over Cyprus
and dominance of the Mediterranean.
Cervantes was fairly badly wounded on the chest and head. He lost the use of his left hand and would subsequently show off his scars to anyone who'd listen.

Despite his injuries, Cervantes continued to fight in various campaigns and build up a reputation as a soldier, and received commendations from various Spanish dignitaries. In 1575 he decided to go back to Spain, and boarded the 'El Sol', part of a fleet bound for Barcelona. As luck would have it, a storm blew up and separated the El Sol from the rest of the convoy. A Berber pirate ship captured the El Sol and Cervantes was sold into a life of slavery in Algiers. By an even worse stroke of misfortune, his captors found the letters of recommendation he had received and decided to set an astronomically high ransom on his freedom of 500 gold pieces. His family could not afford it. Over the following five years Cervantes made four escape attempts. Finally in 1580 a Spanish religious order, the Trinitarian Friars, paid his ransom and he finally made it home to Spain.

On his return home Cervantes took up various administrative and civil service posts (including gathering supplies for the famous Spanish Armada which tried to invade Elizabethan England in 1588). Various things happened during this period including an unmarried affair (and consequent love child Isabel de Saavedra) with a lady called Ana Franca de Rojas in 1584. He married and settled down with a teenager called Catalina de Palacios later in the same year. He's thought by some to have ended up in trouble with the law during this period and may have spent some time in jail (some say he was even jailed for murder just after the publication of 'Don Quixote Part I'). He apparently regretted some aspects of his colourful life and became much more devoted to religion in his later years.

Although he had written some verse for his teacher Juan López during the 1560s, Cervantes began his literary career proper on his return to Spain in 1580. He wrote several plays, prize-winning poems and in 1585 a novel called 'La Galatea'.
Cervantes hit the big time in 1605 when 'Don Quixote Part I' was published. It was a blockbusting triumph and several official editions (and unofficial pirate versions) were printed in its first year.
Alas, like so many modern writers, he had sold the full rights to 'Don Quixote Part I' before he knew how well it would sell, and he made little profit from it. However, he had become a famous writer because of it, and his works were translated into several languages during his own time. He was rather shrewder on publishing deals for his later works (including poetry and play collections), and 'Don Quixote Part II', a sequel to his big break, appeared in 1615.

Cervantes died of dropsy on St George's Day in April 1616, just after finishing the foreword to his last novel, 'Persiles'. In parts of Spain it is traditional for a woman to give a book to her beloved on that day, and for him to offer her a rose.