MACHEN, Arthur (trans.); CASANOVA DI SEINGALT, Jacques.

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The Memoirs. Limited edition, this set signed and dated by the translator on the front free endpaper of volume 1, "Arthur Machen. February 4th, 1926". This copy is out-of-series from a limited edition of 1,000 copies. The edition is revised by the translator and cult fantasy author Machen, now including an additional two chapters, maps of Casanova's itineraries, and a new translator's preface.The Casanova Society imprint was established to produce this handsome edition of the great libertine's autobiography and it continued to release luxurious reprints until 1926. Its publisher, John Rodker (1894-1955), was like Casanova an amorous man, and his turbulent venture was satirized in Wyndham Lewis's Apes of God (1930). Rodker published the first British edition of Ulysses in the same year he founded the Casanova Society to issue salacious literary classics in sumptuous editions. He "knew the literature; he had taste and judgement, and a fine flair for producing a handsome volume" (Warburg, p. 106).Casanova's autobiography is regarded as one of the most authentic sources for the customs and norms of 18th-century European social life and his name remains synonymous with the art of seduction. Machen's translation was first published in 1894.

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