Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, playwright, and soldier whose Don Quixote is widely regarded as one of the greatest works of world literature and a foundational text in the development of the modern novel. Born near Madrid in 1547, Cervantes lived a difficult and adventurous life that included military service, serious injury at the Battle of Lepanto, captivity in Algiers, financial hardship, government work, and repeated struggles to secure literary success.Cervantes's greatest achievement, Don Quixote, was published in two parts in 1605 and 1615. In the figure of Don Quixote and his companion Sancho Panza, Cervantes created one of literature's most enduring pairings: comic, humane, contradictory, and inexhaustibly alive. His work combines satire, adventure, realism, romance, social observation, philosophical comedy, and deep sympathy for human weakness. Cervantes remains essential to readers of Spanish literature, classic fiction, early modern literature, comic novels, literary satire, and the history of European fiction.
