Giacomo Casanova, the world’s greatest lover, may have been Venetian, but it was the French government who, in early 2010, paid top dollar for the licentious libertine’s manuscript.
Casanova wrote of his adventures from 1789 to his death in 1798, during which time he was employed as the librarian to Count Waldstein in the Castle of Dux, Bohemia. The manuscript, “Histoire de mi vie” or “History of my Life,” allegedly details his conquest over more than 100 women—at least one of which was a nun—and several men. Unfortunately, the general public has only seen censored and otherwise altered versions of the account.
The 3,700 manuscript was acquired by the Brockhaus family in 1820 and survived the bombing of Leipzig in World War II. It was smuggled out of Germany on a US military truck in 1945 and published fifteen years later.
The French National Library purchased the cultural artifact for a cool € million—over US $9.4 million—making it the most expensive written manuscript in the world.
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You do realize that if the dates you provided were correct, Casanova died when he was 9 years old, right?
He wrote for 9 years, from 1789 to 1798.