Books: Don Quixote's Author

A MAN CALLED CERVANTES—Bruno Frank—Viking ($2.50).

In 50 words Thomas Carlyle said most of what is actually known about the man who wrote Don Quixote: "A certain strong man fought stoutly at Lepanto, worked stoutly as an Algerine slave; with stout cheerfulness endured famine and nakedness and the world's ingratitude; and sitting in gaol, with one hand left him, wrote our joyfullest, and all but our deepest, modern book, and named it Don Quixote." Not a letter or a manuscript of Cervantes has survived, nothing but a few legal documents, "residuum of his continual poverty."

Author Frank, admitting that not enough is...