Here is the first biography of Casanova, "the king of all adventurers," the great gallant of the Eighteenth Century. Liar, forger, cardsharp, adulterer, seducer, he had only his wits to protect him from unmasking - and the resultant imprisonment and poverty. Yet in the midst of his ruthless existence he found time to be, also, a student to the humanities, a philosopher, dramatist and poet.

His Memoirs, famous through they are, have been unavailable to all but a few, and cover but a portion of his career. Mr. Endore has undertaken to sift out the falsehood in the Memoirs, fill in their hiatuses, and complete the life-story, basing it upon the latest available sources.

So amazing was the life of this paradoxical gentlemen that a generation after his death the world refused to believe he had ever existed. He became a rakehelly myth. Mr. Endore has restored him to his rightful place in history, at the same time preserving the picturesque and flavorsome aspects of his nature.