c. 2007 (most recent)
Introduction: ix - xxiii (9 - 23)
Chronology: xxiv - lxvii (24 - 67)
Eleven volumes: 1 -1172
Textual Note: 1173 - 1185
Notes: 1186 - 1402
Index: 1403 - 1429
Author's life, some high points
The Age of Reason: you believed in Christianity but not in Hell, certainly not if you lived in Venice.
April 2, 1725: born to an actress; her husband not likely to be the father of Casanova; brought up by his maternal grandmother (his parents were always on the move, touring)
1725 - 1798 (75 years of one of the most important centuries in US / European history)
1734 - 1737, 9 years old - 12 years old: Padua; to be tutored for career in church; coming of age; falls in love with daughter of teacher; schooled in sex; four years in school there
1737, 12 years old; enrolled at Padua University; studies civil and canon law
1739, 14 years old -- moves to Venice where he lives "largely"
1741, 16 years old -- become an abate; graduates from Padua University
1742, 17 years old -- abandons idea of a life in the church; degree in law, though had little interest in law, and "decided instead to enter the priesthood (p. xii -- conflicting statements from different sources); short stay in the seminary of S. Cipriano on Murano ended in his expulsion for suspected homosexuality
1743, 18 years old -- busy, busy year; imprisoned in the fortress of S. Andrea where some two thousand Albanians, soldiers and their families, were temporarily stationed; contracts his first case of STD there; travels to Rome via Naples; affair
1744, 19 years old -- again "expelled" by the church; sent to Constantinople at his own request
1745, 20 years old -- back in Venice; acquires a taste for gambling; loses all his money
1746, 21 years old -- saves the life of a senator who suffers a stroke in a gondola; very important senator adopts Casanova as his son; lived the grand life for three years but bad behavior and the senator asked him to leave; he leaves in 1748 (expelled or on his own volition)
1748, 23 years old -- back in Venice; sexual behavior noted by church; again, expelled from Venice; short-lived affair with Henriette; charges which resulted in his eviction from Venice were dropped
1749, 24 years old -- ends up in Geneva; falls in love with "the love of his life" whom he met in Cesena -- the affair lasted only seven months
1750: back in Venice, but quickly on his own Grand Tour
1750 - 1752, 25 - 27 years old -- first trip to Paris
1752, 27 years old -- to Dresden
1753, 28 years old -- first play well received; travels Europe, Prague, Vienna, and then back to Venice; threesome with Casanova, a nun and one of the girls from her convent; voyeur was the French Ambassador, the Abbe de Bernis loved this
1755, 30 years old -- imprisoned; the prigioni, linked by the celebrated Bridge of Sighs to the Doge's Palace; inmates relegated either to the pozzi (the wells, subject to flooding) or the piombi (small and completed unfurnished apartments); 15 months before his escapt
1756, 31 years old -- escapes prison; flees Venice; lives on that story for five years; fled to Paris
1757, 32 years old -- second time back to Paris; establishes the country's first state lottery and makes his fortune; would have probably continued but invested his growing wealth in the painted silk industry; it proved a disaster; for the next quarter century, almost always on the move
1758, 33 years old -- secret mission to Holland on behalf of France to see bonds
1759, 34 years old -- back in Paris; meets Rosseau (unimpressed with Rosseau); departs for Amsterdam
1760, 35 years old -- travels Europe; meets Voltaire
1761, 36 years old -- to Naples
1762, 37 years old -- assists a transgender operation
1763, 38 years old -- Milan, Marseilles, Paris, and then London (probably hoping to set up another state lottery); fleeced by a prostitute; never rich again from this period on
1764, 39 years old -- destitute, leaves England forever
1765, 40 years old -- two audiences with Catherine the Great
1767, 42 years old -- back to Vienna; breaks gambling laws; expelled from the city
1768, 42 years old -- to Madrid
1769, 43 years old -- to France again
1770, 44 years old -- travels Europe again; meets Bonnie Prince Charlie
1771, 45 years old -- admitted to two famous literary Academies; goes to Florence; resolves to change life; fails; expelled from city
1772, 46 years old -- Bologna; works on his translation of the Iliad
I will stop here for now.
Skip ahead to:
1782: 56 years old -- long story, but again forced to leave Venice
1783: 57 years old -- another Wanderjahr: Vienna, Innsbruck, Augsburg, Frankfurt, Aachen, Paris -- where he met Benjamin Franklin and nearly joined an expedition to Madagascar -- Dresden, Berlin, Prague;
1784, 58 years old -- returns to Vienna; saved; offered a permanent position as librarian in his castle at Dux in Bohemia; lived at Dux the last fourteen years of his life; short journeys thereafter; notably to Prague in 1787 where he met Mozart; in the library, wrote and wrote and wrote; produced a long novel -- science fiction before its time; and, also, more surprising still, was the publication in 1790, three mathematical studies on the Duplication of the Cube;
1790: began work on Histoire de ma vie which was to make him name immortal
1797, the Most Serene Republic of Venice came to an end after existing for more than a thousand years; voted itself out of existence; overrun by Napoleon;
June 4, 1798, 73 years old: died; urinary infection
His history was not seen in its original form until 1967; Professor Willard Trask's superb English translation
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