Still an unsuccessful playwright at the age of forty, Cervantes married the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, Catalina Salaza y Vozmediano. Little is known of his wife, but the marriage was not a successful one. At this time of life, Cervantes had to support, besides his wife and natural daughter Isabel, his mother, two sisters and the widowed mother-in-law. He applied for many civil service posts and eventually was granted a job as commissary collecting foodstuffs for the Invincible Armada. It is during this period that Cervantes learned to know the Spanish peasant, and his stored-up knowledge was to result in the creation of Sancho Panza.
Bookkeeping was a complicated and arduous procedure, and Cervantes was twice imprisoned for owing money to the treasury from a shortage in his accounts. Cervantists disagree whether or not the Seville prison was where he began to write Don Quixote. In the preface, the author hints to the reader that "You may suppose it [Don Quixote] the Child of Disturbance, engendered in some dismal prison . . . "; this line is the basis for controversy among biographers.
Misfortune continued to dog him when he was out of prison, as if to impede the composition of his masterpiece. Finally completed in 1604, the Quixote was an immediate bestseller. Running into six editions a year after that, Cervantes derived no further profit from the book, other than the money originally paid him by his publisher. The success of his work, however, interested the Count of Lemos and the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, who became his patrons, although they did not do much to improve Cervantes' miserable circumstances.
