Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Book summary

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born in 1547 to a poor doctor. He joined the Spanish Navy at the age of twenty-one, and spent several years as a hostage in Algiers, although Cervantes attempted to escape several times he was unsuccessful and remained a captive. He was finally ransomed and returned to Spain in 1580. It is believed that Cervantes began writing Don Quixote while he was still incarcerated. Cervantes was a playwright much like Shakespeare and wrote his plays around the same time as the famous bard. Many literary critics believe that Don Quixote is the antithesis of Hamlet, yet Cervantes did not see financial success until very late in his life. He had sold the publishing rights to the first volume of Don Quixote for a pittance, and though the book received great success Cervantes himself received little success until a year before his death. In 1615, Cervantes published the second volume of Don Quixote and died a year later on the same date as William Shakespeare.