Miguel de Cervantes
1547–1616 · Spanish (Alcalá de Henares) · Spanish Golden Age
Known for: Author of Don Quixote, widely considered the first modern novel
Miguel de Cervantes led a life as dramatic as his fiction. He fought at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, where his left hand was permanently maimed. He was captured by Barbary pirates and spent five years as a slave in Algiers before being ransomed. Back in Spain, he failed as a tax collector, was imprisoned multiple times, and struggled financially his entire life.
Don Quixote was an immediate bestseller but didn't make him wealthy. The novel—about a man driven mad by reading too many romances who sets out as a knight-errant—was the first to explore the line between reality and illusion, madness and sanity, with full comic and philosophical depth. He died on the same date as Shakespeare, April 23, 1616.
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