[Gutenberg 2966] • The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 16: Depart Switzerland

(Jacques) Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798) was a Venetian adventurer 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. He began to think about writing his memoirs around 1780 and began in earnest by 1789, as "the only remedy to keep from going mad or dying of grief." The first draft was completed by July 1792, and he spent the next six years revising it.