Histoire de ma vie

Histoire de ma vie (The Story of My Life) is both the memoir and autobiography of Giacomo Casanova, a famous 18th-century Italian 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 in 1971.

Histoire de ma vie
page from the manuscript
AuthorGiacomo Casanova
Original titleHistoire de ma vie
CountryKingdom of Bohemia
LanguageFrench
Genrememoir, autobiography
Set inEurope, 18th century
Original text
Histoire de ma vie at French Wikisource

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 (born 2 April 1725, in Venice, died 4 June 1798, in Dux, Bohemia, now Duchcov, Czech Republic), 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 (£5,750,000). 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. Following this acquisition, a new edition of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, based on the manuscript, was published from 2013 to 2015.

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