History of My Life, Volumes 9-10; Volume 910

Front Cover

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

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.

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.

 

Contents

Volume
9
page
22
page
45
page
77
page
105
page
137
page
187
page
215
Volume 10
page 21
21
page 41
41
page 65
65
page 90
90
Crèvecoeur Baumbach Journey to Moscow Continuation of
117
see the Czarina My conversations with that great sovereign
138
page 173
173

page
249
page
271
page
305
Bottarelli Letter from Pauline in care of Senhor de Saa
338
NOTES page
367
page 212
212
page 237
237
page 268
268
page 297
297
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1997)

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 spy. He translated Homer's Iliad into Italian and collaborated with Da Ponte on the libretto for Mozart's Don Giovanni. He retired in 1785 to the castle of a friend—Count Waldstein of Bohemia—in order to write his memoirs.