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History of My Life

Giacomo Chevalier de Seingalt Casanova
translated by Willard R. Trask

Volume
Volumes 11 and 12
Publication Date
Binding Type

Award-winning translation of the complete memoirs of Casanova available for the first time in paperback.

The last two volumes of Casanova's account of his extraordinary life include the story of his imprisonment in Buen Retiro, his trip to Madrid and his affair with Doña Ignacia, his journey to Barcelona and his detention in the Tower, his encounter with Lord Baltimore, and his serious illness in Aix-en-Provence when he is taken care of by a mysterious woman who turns out to the servant of one of his first loves, Henriette.

Because every previous edition of Casanova's Memoirs had been abridged...

Award-winning translation of the complete memoirs of Casanova available for the first time in paperback.

The last two volumes of Casanova's account of his extraordinary life include the story of his imprisonment in Buen Retiro, his trip to Madrid and his affair with Doña Ignacia, his journey to Barcelona and his detention in the Tower, his encounter with Lord Baltimore, and his serious illness in Aix-en-Provence when he is taken care of by a mysterious woman who turns out to the servant of one of his first loves, Henriette.

Because every previous edition of Casanova's Memoirs had been abridged to suppress the author's political and religious views and tame his vivid, often racy, style, the literary world considered it a major event when Willard R. Trask's translation of the complete original text was published in six double volumes between 1966 and 1971. Trask's award-winning translation now appears in paperback for the first time.

Reviews

Reviews

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.

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.

Some of the most beautiful spines I have ever seen appear collectively on the six-volume edition of Casanova's History of My Life.

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.

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.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
5
x
8
Pages
864
ISBN
9780801856679
Illustration Description
32 b&w illus.
Table of Contents

Volume 11
Chapter 1-10
Notes
Volume 12
Chapter 1-10
Notes
Revisions
Index

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Giacomo Chevalier de Seingalt Casanova

Giacomo Casanova was born in Venice in 1725. His parents, both actors, wanted him to become a priest, but their hopes were dashed when, at sixteen, he was expelled from seminary for immoral misconduct. Probably best-known for his reputation as a womanizer, Casanova was in turn a secretary, a soldier in the Venetian army, a preacher, an alchemist, a gambler, a violinist, a lottery director, and a...