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kalwisti · 08-01-2015, 11:18 AM

I've been sidelined this week with a knee injury, so I've had time to do some extra reading. I'm halfway through Donald McCrory's No Ordinary Man, a biography of Cervantes. It is nicely done; although it has scholarly apparatus (footnotes, etc.), it is accessible to the layperson and is probably the best English-language biography of Cervantes currently available.

There are significant periods of Cervantes' life about which almost nothing is known. That has not stopped literary critics from making wild conjectures, so I particularly like McCrory's statement that "In the study of Cervantes the dispersion of error is the first step in the discovery of truth."

McCrory, Donald P. No ordinary man : the life and times of Miguel de Cervantes. Peter Owen Publishers, 2005. (eBook ed., 2014). ISBN 9780720612479

The last English-language biography I remember reading was Melveena McKendrick's Cervantes (Little, Brown & Co., 1980) which has gone out of print.

A bit off-topic, but thanks to Froide, I was pointed to a recent NPR story on the discovery of Cervantes' burial site inside the walls of a Madrid convent:

http://www.wnyc.org/story/the-reason...-in-a-convent/
Frayer, Lauren. "The reason Cervantes asked to be buried under a convent." 24 June 2015.

08-01-2015, 11:18 AM	#22613
kalwisti Enthusiast Posts: 41 Karma: 262454 Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: South Texas Device: Nook Glowlight	I've been sidelined this week with a knee injury, so I've had time to do some extra reading. I'm halfway through Donald McCrory's No Ordinary Man, a biography of Cervantes. It is nicely done; although it has scholarly apparatus (footnotes, etc.), it is accessible to the layperson and is probably the best English-language biography of Cervantes currently available. There are significant periods of Cervantes' life about which almost nothing is known. That has not stopped literary critics from making wild conjectures, so I particularly like McCrory's statement that "In the study of Cervantes the dispersion of error is the first step in the discovery of truth." McCrory, Donald P. No ordinary man : the life and times of Miguel de Cervantes. Peter Owen Publishers, 2005. (eBook ed., 2014). ISBN 9780720612479 The last English-language biography I remember reading was Melveena McKendrick's Cervantes (Little, Brown & Co., 1980) which has gone out of print. A bit off-topic, but thanks to Froide, I was pointed to a recent NPR story on the discovery of Cervantes' burial site inside the walls of a Madrid convent: http://www.wnyc.org/story/the-reason...-in-a-convent/ Frayer, Lauren. "The reason Cervantes asked to be buried under a convent." 24 June 2015. Last edited by kalwisti; 08-01-2015 at 11:30 AM. Reason: Added link to NPR story on discovery of Cervantes' burial site.