History of My Life [Hardcover]

Giacomo Casanova (Author), Willard R. Trask (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 6, 2007

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

The name of Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt (1725-98), is now synonymous with amorous exploits, and there are plenty of these, vividly narrated, in his memoirs. But Casanova was not just an energetic lover. In his time he was a diplomat, businessman, trainee priest, traveler, prisoner, magician, confidence man, gambler, professional entertainer, and charlatan. He financed business projects, organized lotteries, wrote opera libretti, and dabbled in high politics. Above all he was an autobiographer of enduring brilliance and subtlety who left behind him what is probably the most remarkable confession ever written.

Casanova explored to the full all the possibilities eighteenth-century Venice offered by way of love and profit before being imprisoned, escaping from jail, and fleeing from the city to begin travels that took him across Europe. In Moscow and London, Berlin and Constantinople, he met the famous men and women of his time—Catherine the Great, Voltaire, Louis XV, Rousseau—and recorded his encounters for the memoirs he wrote in retirement at the end of his life.

History of My Life is by turns touching, thrilling, wonderfully comic, and quite irresistible. The present edition, which includes approximately one third of Casanova's enormous (and unfinished) book, contains all his major adventures and all his greatest affairs of the heart.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1512 pages
• Publisher: Everyman's Library; Abridged edition (February 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307265579
• ISBN-13: 978-0307265579
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 2.3 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #451,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars good reading, June 27, 2007

By 

Peter Mestancik (Toronto, Ontario) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: History of My Life (Hardcover)

My introduction to Casanova was in Paris of the sixties as a young Canadian student at the Sorbonne. At that time, Tante Ivette, the general's wife was imposing a rule of high morals in Paris. Not all books were always available, even on the Left Bank. However, one day while meandering through the Librairie Joseph Gibert on Boulevard St. Michel, I found there a Hachette Collection du Flambeau edition of a' Histoire de ma vie par Jacques Casanova'. Needless to say, I was in ecstasy, but knowing the rules, also a bit sheepish. I took it to checkout and put it in front of the salesclerk. He looked at the book then gave me a stare of wild amazement.I believed I was to be shipped out straight to French Guianna's Cayenne Islands. Monsieur, je ne peux pas vous permettre d'acheter. I interrupted with a quick snap in english " but I am Canadian". A brief 'bon' was all I heard and the book was mine. I highly recommend Casanova to every man. To read it is to have an education in the humanities of the highest order. There is no one like him to introduce the pre revolutionary 18th century to the reader. In our times, most will know him as the complete seducer of women. Almost right. He loved woman, as women loved him. Above all and in all, he was a true gentleman. Read him then and know his charm. Out of learning evil is not bred, nor virtue found in all who are unread.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a fascinating window into the 18th century, July 13, 2009

By 

drollere (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: History of My Life (Everyman Library Classics) (Hardcover)

i became interested in casanova after his famous and daring escape from prison was explained to me during a tour of the doges palace in venice. i found on reading it that the book is much more than a life: it is an extended observation and commentary on the mores of european elites in the middle of the 18th century.

the complete english translation by willard trask has been edited to about half its length for this everyman edition, but all deleted passages are briskly summarized by the editor, peter washington. all casanova's major exploits, including the prison break and his principal seductions, are here in full; there is a useful editorial introduction, a serviceable index (proper names are included, but key topics such as "gambling" or "casino" are not), and exhaustive endnotes.

casanova is a marvelous human paradox: a "sensation seeking" risk taker who prided himself on his reason and intelligence; a freethinking skeptic of religion who nevertheless believed in the necessity of religion and the psychological benefits of prayer; a literary scholar who practiced medicine on the fly; a cheat, liar and seducer who prided himself on his honor; an enlightenment denier of superstition who nevertheless practiced cabalistic incantations and dark arts; a man of whim and impulse who claimed never to have abandoned his duty, at least when he had one. as a writer he has a fabulous ear for dialog, wit and characteristic speech, and the book is filled with memorable characters, humble and great, rich and poor, famous and incidental.

casanova lived at a time when the institutions of nobility and clergy were rupturing under the weight of their own immoraity and arbitrary power. this book makes very clear that his amorous and duplicitous escapades were really acts of defiance against the moral authority of church and state--a sustained campaign "against fools," as he puts it. hogarth's prints, fielding's novels and voltaire's screeds are kin in spirit. to give one intricate example of hypocrisy run amok: casanova seduces and "marries" with promises a teenage girl, who is clapped into a nunnery. a young nun at the same convent -- daughter of a noble family, atheist and mistress of the french ambassador to venice -- seduces casanova's "wife" into a lesbian affair and becomes enamored of casanova himself. she initiates a liaison with him into which her ambassador lover and casanova's "wife" are drawn as a "ménage à quatre". the frenchman later becomes a bishop in the church; but casanova is clapped into prison because he seduces a married woman who is also lusted after by one of the venetian grand inquisitors, who wield unchallenged powers. across many similar escapades, frauds and exploits one becomes starkly aware of the institutional and cultural decay that were widespread in the 18th century, and shaped the resentments that erupted in the french and american revolutions.

the translation by willard trask is excellent, and there is hardly one page in the 1100 that is not hair raising or jaw dropping for its picture of human conduct and human character. despite his protestations of honor and intelligence casanova is candid about his own decadence and stupidity -- written, as he says, so that others may laugh with him at his life. his honesty may have led posterity to heap the sins of the century on his head, but the book makes clear that he was at best a slippery and cheerful swimmer in a very polluted sea.

38 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Caution -- this volume is an abridged version, February 13, 2007

By 

Retired Librarian - See all my reviews

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This review is from: History of My Life (Hardcover)

The Everyman's Library edition of Casanova is abridged from the original, and the Amazon.com description does not note the fact.