The Story of My Life (2001)
Histoire de ma vie (The Story of My Life) is both the unfinished memoir and autobiography of Giacomo Casanova, a famous 18th-century Venetian adventurer. A previous, bowdlerized version was originally known in English as The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova (from the French Mémoires de Jacques Casanova) until the original version was published between 1960 and 1962. The unexpurgated English translation was published between 1966 and 1971. From 1838 to 1960, all the editions of the memoirs were derived from the censored editions produced in German and French in the early nineteenth century. Arthur Machen used one of these inaccurate versions for his English translation published in 1894 which remained the standard English edition for many years. Although Casanova was Venetian, the book is written in French, which was the dominant language of the educated classes at the time. The book covers Casanova's life only through 1774, although the full title of the book is Histoire de ma vie jusqu'à l'an 1797 (History of my Life until the year 1797). On 18 February 2010, the National Library of France purchased the 3,700-page manuscript of Histoire de ma vie for approximately €7 million…
- Published
- 2001
- Pages
- 532
