History of My Life

A young Venetian, imprisoned in the lead-roofed cells of the Doge's Palace for offences against religion, files a hole through the ceiling and walks out across the rooftops at dawn. Giacomo Casanova wrote this autobiography in French during the last years of his life as the librarian of a Bohemian count, completing twelve volumes that were not published in unbowdlerised form until the twentieth century. The book follows him through the courts of Europe in the years before revolution, talking philosophy with Voltaire, schemes with Frederick the Great, lottery mathematics with the French treasury, and love with women whose names fill several hundred pages. He is gambler, alchemist, spy, violinist, abbé, and impostor by turns. The eighteenth century kept no fuller witness to itself.