Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born in 1547 in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. He had a very varied, not particularly successful, career; he enlisted as a soldier and fought bravely at the battle of Lepanto, where his left hand was maimed; was enslaved by the Turks and ransomed after four escape attempts; married, unhappily, a girl seventeen years his junior, and also had an illegitimate daughter, who grew up to be much given to litigation in which he became embroiled.
After his ransom from the Turks, he wrote the pastoral romance, La Galatea , and turned for a time to writing plays, but these were unsuccessful, and he sought official employment. He worked as a tax collector, and, as commissary to the Navy, commandeered provisions for the Armada, a thankless task that he performed with such zeal that he was excommunicated for requisitioning grain belonging to the Dean and Chapter of Seville. He got into trouble over his accounts, and into debt, losing his official employment, and was imprisoned at least twice, although there is no proof of the story that he wrote Don Quixote in prison. This picaresque novel appeared in 1605 when Cervantes was fifty-eight, and marks the beginning of his serious literary activity.
Don Quixote was an immediate success, but brought Cervantes very little money. It was followed by the twelve Novelas ejemplares, which appeared in 1613, and by the poem Viaje de Parnaso, a burlesque poem about contemporary poets. He then returned to the writing of plays, and Ocho comedias y ocho entremesas nuevos was published in 1615. Cervantes was working on part II of Don Quixote when he learned of the publication of the spurious Segundo tomo del ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha by Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda, published at Tarragona in 1614, which included a preface ridiculing Cervantes. Cervantes replied bitterly in the latter part of his own sequel, which appeared in 1615. Cervantes’ last work, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda , was published posthumously in 1617, the year after his death.
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Vol. I, p. 246
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Vol. I, p. 278
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