Casanova's Women: The Great Seducer and the Women He Loved

Told from the perspective of his innumerable sexual conquests, Casanova's Women renders a vivid flesh-and-blood portrait of the famed philanderer, clearing away the myth while illuminating the lives of the women who have too long languished in the shadows. The eighteenth-century Venetian adventurer Giacomo Casanova used his magnetic personality to talk his way into the beds of more than two hundred women. Charming, brilliant, and devastatingly attractive, he claimed to like women and to understand their emotional and sexual needs. To those he truly loved, he was the perfect lover—thoughtful, generous, and imaginative. To others he could be ruthless, selfish, and dishonest. Judith Summers's exuberant and candidly erotic biography reveals how Giacomo Casanova, a sickly son of Venetian actors, went on to transcend the rigid social boundaries of the eighteenth century to keep company with kings and beguile beautiful women. With original research culled from period diaries, wills, correspondence, and memoirs, this unique look at the legendary lady-killer gives voice to the many women on whose naked backs Casanova's reputation was built.