Don Quixote Published

January 1605

In Madrid, a former tax collector and amputee of Lepanto named Miguel de Cervantes published a long comic novel about an aging hidalgo driven mad by chivalric romances. Don Quixote de la Mancha, tilting at windmills with his earthy squire Sancho, invented the modern novel almost by accident and gave the world its most enduring parable of idealism colliding with reality.