num_pages: 544
description: The definitive biography of the impoverished child abandoned by his parents who became the famous writer notorious libertine and self-invented genius whose name still resonates Giacomo Casanova.Today Casanova is a synonym for great lover yet the real story of this remarkable figure is little known. Giacomo Casanova was raised by his maternal grandmother an illiterate peasant. His birthplace Venice was a republic in decline reputedly the most debauched city in Europe. Casanova would add to the republics reputation. Over the course of his lifetime he claimed to have seduced more than 100 women among them married women young women in convents girls just barely in their teens and in one notorious instance his own illegitimate daughter.Casanova came of age in a Venice filled with spies and informers. Naturally brilliant he was intellectually curious and read forbidden books for which he was jailed. He staged a dramatic escape from Venices notorious prison the only person known to have done so. He then fled to France where he invented the national lottery that still exists to this day. But intemperate by nature he made enemies at the French court. He crisscrossed Europe landing for a while in St. Petersburg where he was admitted to the court of Catherine the Great. He corresponded with Voltaire and met Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponteassisting them as they composed the timeless opera Don Giovanni . And he wrote what many consider the greatest memoir of the era the 12-volume Story of My Life .A figure straight out of a Henry Fielding erotic brilliant impulsive and desperate for recognition Casanova was a self-destructive genius. This witty roisterous biography exposes his astonishing life in rich intimate detail. At the same time it is a dazzling portrait of eighteenth-century Europe from serving girls to kings and courtiers. Esteemed biographer Laurence Bergreen brings a sensual world vividly alive in this irresistible book.
language: English
title: Casanova: The World of a Seductive Genius
publisher: Simon & Schuster