Casanova's Women

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.