The Hard Life and Poor Best of Cervantes

Gabriel Josipovici

• Cervantes by William Byron
  Cassell, 583 pp, £9.95, ISBN 0 00 000097 3

Not much is known about Cervantes. He was born in 1547 in Alcalá de Henares, not far from Madrid. His grandfather, a specialist in fiscal law for the Inquisition, had amassed a fortune by shady means and then withdrawn to another city with a former mistress, leaving his children, to whom he had given no proper education, to fend for themselves. The burden of looking after the family fell on Rodrigo, Cervantes’ father, who had the unfortunate idea of becoming a surgeon to support his dependents. At the time it was doctors, with their university degrees, who achieved fame and wealth, leaving to ill-paid and ill-trained surgeons the mundane tasks of splinting broken limbs, administering purges and bleeding for the fever. To avoid the constant threat of having their goods confiscated or being thrown into prison for debt, the family was always on the move: Valladolid (the Court city), Córdoba, Seville, finally Madrid.