Birthdate: 29th September 1547
Nationality: Spanish
Bio:
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest representative of the Spanish Golden Age. He was born in 1547 in Alcalá de Henares, Spain to a poor family. His early life was eventful, as he pursued a career as a soldier and saw significant action in battles against the Ottoman Turks, even enduring captivity in Algiers for a period. These experiences provided inspiration for some of his most notable works which embraced themes of heroism and captured the adventurous spirit of the age of discovery and empire-building.
In his later life, Cervantes found renown as one of the pioneer authors of the modern novel with the publication of his seminal work Don Quixote in 1605. Mocking the chivalric romances of the era, it tells the tale of the noble but absurd Alonso Quijano who takes on the identity of the knight Don Quixote and embarks on a series of comical adventures. Renowned for its wit and allegorical depth, Don Quixote has endured as one of the most influential works of fiction ever published and is considered a founding work of both Western literature and the modern global genre of novel-writing itself.
Cervantes dedicated much of his later career to writing, completing a number of successful theatrical works and a sprawling follow up novel to Don Quixote before his death in 1616. Though he struggled financially much of his life, he left behind an undeniable literary legacy that forever shaped the development of the novel and storytelling forms as we know them today. Miguel de Cervantes remains one of the most prolific and respected authors of early modern Spain.
