On this day...16th January

Don Quixote, the full title of which is The Ingenious Nobleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha, is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, whose first publication took place on the 16th of January.

Consisting of two volumes, Don Quixote is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published, such as the Bokklubben World Library collection that cites Don Quixote as the authors' choice for the "best literary work ever written".

Don Quixote is the name assumed by a gentleman of advancing years who, having read perhaps too many tales of chivalry and romance, takes it upon himself to live his life in a chivalric fashion – righting wrongs and saving the defenceless.

Throughout the novel, Cervantes uses such literary techniques as realism, metatheatre, and intertextuality. The book had a major influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844), Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897).

Included in its legacy is the word "quixotic" and the epithet "Lothario"; the latter refers to a character in "El curioso impertinente" ("The Impertinently Curious Man"), an intercalated story that appears in Part One.

Arthur Schopenhauer cited Don Quixote as one of the four greatest novels ever written.

In what year was Don Quixote published?

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