History of My Life, Vols. 9 & 10 [Paperback]

Giacomo Chevalier de Seingalt Casanova (Author), Willard R. Trask (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 1997

Volumes 9 and 10 contain descriptions of Casanova's first visits to England, Prussia, Russia, and Poland. In all these countries he gained access to the Courts. Frederick the Great of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia join the roster of potentates entertained and charmed by the adventurer. Though beginning to age, and ruing it, Casanova still manages to exert a powerful attraction on women.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Trask has written a version in an English fully contemporary yet remarkably Italian in sensibility. With admirable restraint and refinement, he has conveyed the zest and sensuous delight of the original.

(National Book Award Citation 2007)

These memoirs are compulsive reading... they are the work not only of a highly accomplished seducer but of a literary artist of the highest talents.

(J. H. Plumb New York Times Book Review )

Casanovists consider Trask's version the definitive English translation.

(Quest )

Trask expertly rendered this text into English in 1966, and his is the English version to read... Compulsively readable... Certainly, few books better convey the sheer, exuberant joy of being alive and young than these reminiscences.

(Michael Dirda New York Review of Books )

Casanova is unsurpassed as the recreator of the daily talking interests of 18th-century Europe. He ranges from slut to patrician, from closet to cabinet, waterfront to palace. He is superior to all other erotic writers because of his pleasure in news, in gossip, in the whole personality of his mistresses.

(V. S. Pritchett )

The Chevalier de Seingalt was a most remarkable man, who had some of the qualities of greatness... Has any novelist or poet ever rendered better than Casanova the passing glory of the personal life?—the gaiety, the spontaneity, the generosity of youth: the ups and downs of middle age when our character begins to get to us and we are forced to come to terms with it; the dreadful blanks of later years, when what is gone is gone. All that a life of this kind can contain Casanova put into his story. And how much of the world!—the eighteenth century as you get it in no other book; society from top to bottom; Europe from England to Russia, a more brilliant variety of characters than you can find in any eighteenth-century novel.

(Edmund Wilson )

Book Description

The complete memoirs of Casanova—available for the first time in paperback.

(2006)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 856 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (April 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801856663
• ISBN-13: 978-0801856662
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.7 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,197,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars and on and on..., October 19, 2011

By 

Gary W. Olson - See all my reviews

This review is from: History of My Life, Vols. 9 & 10 (Paperback)

Casanova's life was amazing, with enough adventure and intrigue to fill... well... volumes and volumes of text. Unfortunately, that's exactly what he decided to do, and while much of it is interesting and involving, after a while I just kept saying 'how much longer does this go on?' Certainly worth reading, but pace yourself or your head will go numb.