The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt 1725-1798 Volume 1 Venetian Years


Book Description

Rare edition with unique illustrations and elegant classic cream paper. According to Wikipedia: "Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798) was a Venteitian adveturers and author. His main book Histoire de ma vie (History of My Life), part autobiography and part memoir, is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century. So famous a womanizer was the Italian-born libertine Giacomo Casanova that, a full two centuries after his death, his name remains synonymous with the art of seduction. But for the years he spent in the employ of Count Waldstein of Bohemia as a librarian, Casanova, "the world's greatest lover" at one time the company of European royalty, popes and cardinals, and man known to the likes of Voltaire, Goethe and Mozart would have been consigned to obscurity." Includes unique illustrations.




The Shadowed Heart


Book Description

What if you cannot discern between good and evil—even if you have second sight? Chiara, a young, clairvoyant Gypsy, arrives in Venice on the first day of Carnival in 1767. When she sees Luca Zeani with his face of a fallen angel, she believes him to be the man who violated her sister—the man she has vowed to destroy. Why then does her second sight show her a man surrounded by light when she is sure he is a man of darkness? As she starts falling in love with Luca, her quest for the truth becomes all-important. At the same time, Luca becomes involved in a risky conspiracy. Even when the truth is revealed to Chiara, danger and treachery threaten what she holds dear. Will knowing the truth be enough to survive?







Memoirs of Casanova Volume VII


Book Description

Memoirs of Casanova (1792) is the autobiography of Italian adventure and socialite Giacomo Casanova. Written at the end of his life, the Memoirs capture the experiences of one of Europe's most notorious figures, a man whose escapades as a gambler, womanizer, and socialite are matched only by his unique gift for sharing them with the world. More than perhaps any other man, Casanova sought to emulate the lessons of the Enlightenment on the level of everyday life, a sentiment captured perfectly in the opening sentence of his Memoirs: "I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent."Memoirs of Casanova Volume VII follows Giacomo Casanova from Paris--where he spent two years learning the French language and enraging local authorities--to Vienna, a city unsuited to his libertine lifestyle. After a year, he grows tired of Austrian stuffiness and returns to Venice, his birth city. There, he gains and loses fortunes overnight, living the torturous lows and intoxicating highs of life as a professional gambler. Somehow, in a city where supposedly everyone knows his name, Casanova accumulates even more enemies, drawing the attention of state spies and risking not just disgrace, but a lengthy imprisonment. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Giacomo Casanova's Memoirs of Casanova is a classic of European literature reimagined for modern readers.




Nun of Murano


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Adventurer


Book Description

A fast-paced narrative about the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova, from celebrated biographer Leo Damrosch “A nuanced, deftly contextualized biography of an adventurer, an opportunist, and a man of voracious appetites . . . another top-notch work from Damrosch.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “An eye-opening and well-informed study of an ‘extraordinary character’ in all his darkness and brilliance.”—Publishers Weekly The life of the iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) has never been told in the depth it deserves. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment’s shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, a spy—and the first to tell his own story. In his vivid autobiography Histoire de Ma Vie, he recorded at least a hundred and twenty love affairs, as well as dramatic sagas of duels, swindles, arrests, and escapes. He knew kings and an empress, Catherine the Great, and most of the famous writers of the time, including Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. Drawing on seldom used materials, including the original French and Italian primary sources, and probing deeply into the psychology, self-conceptions, and self-deceptions of one of the world’s most famous con men and seducers, Leo Damrosch offers a gripping, mature, and devastating account of an Enlightenment man, freed from the bounds of moral convictions.







History of My Life


Book Description

Award-winning translation of the complete memoirs of Casanova available for the first time in paperback. In volumes 5 and 6, Casanova brings his flight from the Inquisitor's prison in Venice to a happy conclusion. Exiled from Venice, he goes to Munich and Paris, where he establishes himself as a cabalist, makes a fortune in Holland, helps start the French State Lottery, goes on to Switzerland where he meets Voltaire. 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.







Crescendo of the Virtuoso


Book Description

During the Age of Revolution, Paris came alive with wildly popular virtuoso performances. Whether the performers were musicians or chefs, chess players or detectives, these virtuosos transformed their technical skills into dramatic spectacles, presenting the marvelous and the outré for spellbound audiences. Who these characters were, how they attained their fame, and why Paris became the focal point of their activities is the subject of Paul Metzner's absorbing study. Covering the years 1775 to 1850, Metzner describes the careers of a handful of virtuosos: chess masters who played several games at once; a chef who sculpted hundreds of four-foot-tall architectural fantasies in sugar; the first police detective, whose memoirs inspired the invention of the detective story; a violinist who played whole pieces on a single string. He examines these virtuosos as a group in the context of the society that was then the capital of Western civilization. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1999.