25 Apr /13

Casanova

Casanova today is a word that is more or less synonymous with womaniser. It dates back to Giacomo Casanova who was born in Venice and spent much of his life travelling across Europe. In 1792, Casanova published his huge memoirs hundreds of pages long in French. It was called Histoire de ma vie [History of My Life] in which Casanova describes his adventures and pleasures. These mainly included music, food and women (of which he mentions 120 in his autobiography). His proclivities as a lover were immortalised as a word in the English language towards the end of the nineteenth century.