Was Don Quixote Really a Bestseller? New Data to Dismantle Old Clichés

Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote has become one of the most influential and important books of Western culture. And it has done so from humble beginnings (a book of chivalry for entertainment) and a gamble by the Madrid bookseller Francisco de Robles (that of having a best-seller that could capitalise on the success of the picaresque novel Guzmán de Alfarache). But was Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote really a best-seller? Can Cervantes' genius really be confined to the limits of the chivalry genre? Don Quixote - in fact, the Quixotes of Miguel de Cervantes, the 1605 one and the 1615 one - still challenge 21st-century readers, forcing them to rethink some of the clichés that have become set in stone, when they are no more than the ashes of a romantic fancy of the 19th century.