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TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY: 
Birth of Cervantes [1547] 
best known for his book, Don Quixote de la Mancha.


Think of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra as the Spanish language’s north star—the writer so towering that people still call Spanish la lengua de Cervantes (“the language of Cervantes”). He’s widely regarded as the greatest writer in Spanish and one of the world’s pre-eminent novelists. His masterpiece, Don Quixote, often hailed as the first modern novel, isn’t just a classic of Western literature; it helped set the template for the novel as we know it—character-driven, self-aware, and playful about the line between reality and imagination.

Cervantes lived from 1547 to 1616, right through the climax and the unraveling of Spain’s Golden Age. He absorbed the era’s big tensions—imperial pride, religious conflict, economic strain—and filtered them into humane, often comic art. He believed in noble ideals even as he watched them collide with messy reality, which is exactly the sweet spot where Don Quixote lives: the dreamer and the world, constantly bumping into each other.

FUN FACT:  Cervantes fought at the 1571 Battle of Lepanto and was wounded so badly he lost the use of his left hand—earning the nickname el manco de Lepanto (“the one-handed man of Lepanto”). On his way home from service, he was captured by Barbary pirates and spent five years as a captive in Algiers, plotting multiple escapes before being ransomed—an ordeal that sharpened his eye for adventure and human resilience. 

DID YOU KNOW:  Cervantes and Shakespeare died on the same date—April 23, 1616—but not the same day, thanks to Spain using the Gregorian calendar and England still on the Julian calendar. 

OR THAT: Don Quixote arrived in two acts: Part I in 1605 and Part II in 1615, with ten years of fame, parody, and a cheeky fake sequel by another author in between that nudged Cervantes to finish his own second part.

There’s more to him than the knight and the squire. He wrote La Galatea (pastoral fiction), the sharp and varied Novelas ejemplares (“Exemplary Novels”), and the late experimental romance Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda. In everyday life he was often scraping by—working as a purchasing agent for the Armada and later a tax collector—proof that literary genius doesn’t always come with a steady paycheck.

In short, Cervantes was both idealist and realist: a man who cherished grand purposes while chronicling how imperfect humans chase them. That blend of tenderness and irony is why his voice still feels modern—and why Don Quixote keeps tilting at our imaginations. 

Building Your Great Collection, One Fine Book at a Time.

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