CASANOVA DE SEINGALT, GIOVANNI JACOPO (1725-1i98), Italian adventurer and author of the famous Memoires, was born at Venice in 1725. His parents, taking a journey to London, left him, when he was a year old, in charge of his grandmother, who sent him at 16 to the seminary of St. Cyprian in Venice, from which he was expelled for scandalous and immoral conduct, which would have cost him his liberty, had not his mother procured him a situation in the household of the Cardinal Acquaviva where he remained for a short time before he began that career of adventure and intrigue which only ended with his death. He visited Rome, Naples, Corfu and Constantinople. By turns journalist, preacher, abbe, diplomatist, he was nothing very long, except homme a bonnes fortunes. In 1755, having re turned to Venice, he was denounced as a spy and imprisoned. On Nov. 1, 1756 he escaped, and made his way to Paris. Here he was made director of the state lotteries, gained much financial reputation and a considerable fortune, and made a figure in high society. In 17S9 he set out again on his travels. He visited in turn the Netherlands, South Germany, Switzerland—where he made the acquaintance of Voltaire,—Savoy, southern France, Florence—whence he was expelled,—and Rome, where the pope gave him the order of the Golden Spur. In 1761 he returned to Paris, and for the next four or five years lived partly here, partly in England, South Germany and Italy. In 1764 he was in Berlin, where he refused the offer of a post made him by Frederick II. He then travelled by way of Riga and St. Petersburg to Warsaw, where he was favourably received by King Stanislaus Poniatowski. A scandal, followed by a duel, forced him to flee, and he returned by a devious route to Paris, only to find a lettre de cachet awaiting him, which drove him to seek refuge in Spain. Expelled from Madrid in 1769, he went by way of Aix—where he met Cagliostro —to Italy once more. From 1774, with which year his memoirs close, he was a police spy in the service of the Venetian inquisi tors of state; but in 1782, in consequence of a satirical libel on one of his patrician patrons, he had once more to go into exile. In 1785 he was appointed by Count Waldstein, an old Paris acquain tance, his librarian at the chateau of Dux in Bohemia. Here he lived until his death, which probably occurred on June 4, 1798. The main authority for Casanova's life is his Memoires (12 vols., Leipzig, 1826-1838 ; many later editions and translations) , which were written at Dux. They are clever, well written and, above all, cynical, and interesting as a trustworthy picture of the morals and manners of the times. Among Casanova's other works are Confutazione della stone del governo Veneto d'Amelot de la Houssaye (Amsterdam, 1769) ; and the Histoire (Leipzig, 1788; reprinted Bordeaux, 1884 ; Eng. trans. by P. Villars, 1892). See Arthur Machen, trans., Memoirs of Casa nova; S. G. Endore, Casanova: His Known and Unknown Life (1929) ; M. Rostand, Private Life of Casanova (1929).