The son of a deaf surgeon, Miguel de Cervantes was born near Madrid in 1547. He became a soldier in 1570 and was badly wounded in the Battle of Lepanto. Captured by the Turks in 1575, de Cervantes spent five years in prison. He was freed in 1580 and returned home. De Cervantes finally achieved literary success in his later years, publishing the first part of Don Quixote in 1605. He died in 1616.
For nearly his entire life, Miguel de Cervantes struggled financially. His father, Rodrigo, deaf from birth, worked as a surgeon-a lowly trade at the time. De Cervantes and his family moved around several times in his youth, as his father searched for better work prospects.
De Cervantes was an avid reader as a child-a skill he was reportedly taught by a relative. Whether he had much formal education has been a subject of debate among scholars. Some believe that de Cervantes may have been taught by the Jesuits based on some of his writings, but others dispute this claim.