The Story of My Life
€0,00
Skip to product information
The Story of My Life
€0,00
Written in French in the final years of his life and first published posthumously from 1822 onwards, Giacomo Casanova’s The Story of My Life is one of the great autobiographical portraits of eighteenth-century Europe. From his Venetian childhood and clerical ambitions to his travels through aristocratic salons, theatres, gambling houses and courts, Casanova recounts a life shaped by appetite, curiosity, wit and an extraordinary talent for reinvention. His encounters with nobles, intellectuals, artists and lovers provide a vivid panorama of a society on the eve of revolutionary change.
More than a catalogue of romantic conquests, Casanova’s memoir is a richly observed account of the pleasures and contradictions of the Enlightenment, alive to the workings of power, money, reputation and desire. His candid, theatrical voice makes him both the protagonist and the most entertaining interpreter of his own legend, though the memoir’s charm lies as much in its social intelligence as in its scandal. In abridged form, The Story of My Life offers an inviting passage into a vanished world—and into the mind of a man who made storytelling itself an art of survival.
From the book
“I have always been inclined to follow the impulses of my heart, and to allow myself to be guided by them.”
— Giacomo Casanova, The Story of My Life
On The Story of My Life
“Casanova’s memoirs are a picture of the eighteenth century, drawn by one of its most characteristic figures.”
— Stefan Zweig