Casanova: memorie d'avventure amorose | scritte da lui stesso | e riordinate da | Franco Bello [Casanova: memoirs of amorous adventures]. New York: Italian Book Company, 1944.

Casanova: memorie d'avventure amorose | scritte da lui stesso | e riordinate da | Franco Bello [Casanova: memoirs of amorous adventures]. New York: Italian Book Company, 1944.

The fascination of many with the “avventure amorose” of one of the great pleasure seekers and serial seducers (of the wives and daughters of important subjects of French King Louis XV) in European history apparently continued into the 1940s America among Italians in the U.S. 

As is sometimes the case with books published by the Italian Book Company, the information on the cover and title page do not match. Here the title on the cover, which is mostly a photo of a bewigged Casanova in a garden with one of his conquests states, “Casanova| Idolo di tutte le donne.”

The subtitle, “Idol of all women,” does not appear on the title page and may have been an afterthought based on another work of the publisher advertised on the rear cover. There the publisher announces a new release entitled Vita Amorosa di Valentino, with a photo of the great Italian movie idol who, at least in films, was a modern day Casanova, and a text that reads, in Italian, “There needs no explanation for this new publication of the Italian Book Company. The life of the adventurous hero of the screen, idol of women, incomparable artist, his triumphs, his loves, his tragic ending are a subject that will thrill and enthrall any reader, female or male.”

Casanova was available “in an elegant edition” in both a paperback ($1) and a hardbound or "legato" ($2) version. Of purported author Franco Bello, we know that the Società Libraria Italiana also published another work of his with a suspiciously similar title, Vita ed avventure amorose di cavalier Marino (1914), of which title I have never seen a copy (nor can one be found on WorldCat or in the Italian Library system).

Here the IBC was appealling mostly to a certain segment of its readership: women, but perhaps also men who were encouraged (in the Secretary also sold by the IBC) to purchase the model "secretary" works in order to appeal to Italian women in America.

Note that just as an ad for this work appeared on the rear cover of the Secretary, so the advertisement on the rear cover of this work on Casanova was for Vita Amorosa di Valentino (also in the collection, with a slightly different title) published the same year. Valentino was of course the modern day Casanova.

Casanova and Lorenzo Da Ponte - the earliest Italian writer in America in the collection - were great friends and competitors as ladies’ men in Europe, and at least one meeting of the two while Casanova was writing his Memoirs has been reported, in which Da Ponte introduced his own wife to Casanova as his mistress, to save face. This meeting occurred some years before Da Ponte actually came to America, where he wrote and published his own memoirs in Italian, q.v., not published in Italy in his lifetime.

The fascination with Casanova continues unabated to this day: the French state displayed the original manuscript of his memoirs and other writings for the first time at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France for a few months, beginning in November 2011, to long lines of visitors.

Casanova

Franco Bello, ed.

Italian Book Company

1944

20 x 13.5cm; 159 p.

Italian