by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, considered by many the originator of the modern novel, was born in 1547 in Alcala de Henares in central Spain. He died in 1616, on April 23, the same day William Shakespeare (1564-1616) died. Unable to afford a university education, Cervantes joined the military, served overseas, and upon his return found a job as a tax collector. At the age of 58, after a lifetime of poverty and failure, his writing career began to soar when he published Part 1 of his masterpiece The Adventures of Don Quixote (1605; also in Literature and Its Times). Cervantes went on to write numerous poems, plays, and fictional works, most notably the Exemplary Tales (including The Little Gipsy Girl) in 1613 and Part 2 of Don Quixote in 1615. Writing in a time of imperial glory and tumultuous change, he incorporated into his works the...