This Tribeca Press edition includes the full original text as well as an easy to use interactive table of contents.
Histoire de ma vie (Story of my Life) is both the memoir and autobiography of Giacomo Casanova, a famous 18th-century Italian adventurer. A previous, bowdlerizedversion was originally known in English as The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova (from the French Mémoires de Jacques Casanova) until the original version was published in 1960.
Although Casanova was Venetian (born April 2, 1725, in Venice, died June 4, 1798, in Dux, Bohemia, now Duchcov, Czech Republic), the book is written in French, which was the dominant language in the upper class 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 February 18, 2010, the National Library of France purchased the 3,700 page manuscript of Histoire de ma vie for approximately €7 million. The manuscript is believed to have been given to Casanova's nephew, Carlo Angiolini, in 1798. The manuscript is believed to contain pages not previously read or published.
From 1838 to 1960, all the editions of the memoirs were derived from one of these editions. Arthur Machen used one of these inaccurate versions for his English translation published in 1894 which remained the Standard English edition for many years.
The original manuscript was stored in the editor's head office in Leipzig until 1943, when after the closure of the office; they were secured in a bank, saving them just before the 1943 bombings of Leipzig. In June 1945, it was moved to the new head office in Wiesbaden by the American troops.
