A piece of erotic French history has been restored to its home country after nearly two centuries; yesterday the original manuscript of Casanova's memoirs was officially handed over to the French National Library, reports the Washington Post [1]. An anonymous patron donated the treasure to the library after paying about $9.5 million to buy it from a German publisher who first published it in 1822.
The name is today synonymous with lover--remember this song [2]?--but Giacomo (or Jacques) Casanova was also a spy, a soldier, a violinist and a Freemason. The Venetian-born ladies man also had affairs with 122 different women over the course of the eighteenth century, according to The Story Of My Life, his 3,700 page memoir.
Written over the course of nine years at the end of the libertine's life, the book was first published posthumously in 1822, a translated edition by the German publisher Brockhaus. Some of the dirtier parts were censored, so as not to offend the sensibilities of ordinary Germans. The first French edition, published four years later, altered the book further, changing some of the more political passages.
French Culture Minister Frederick Mitterand says the manuscript "contains an essential part of our history." The book, written entirely in French, will be publicly displayed at the French National Library next year, and will also eventually become available online. Though the original text was published in French in 1960, the manuscript itself has never before been viewed by the public.