History of My Life

by Benjamin Franklin

Franklin was Casanova's contemporary and equally restless—diplomat, inventor, printer, ladies' man, and schemer across multiple continents. What makes this pairing special is that Franklin writes with similar wit and self-awareness about his own contradictions, but from an American pragmatist's angle rather than a Venetian libertine's. You'll recognize the same sharp eye for human nature and the same pleasure in recounting narrow escapes and clever negotiations.

by Jean-Pierre Naugrette

This is my surprise pick for you—it's a Victorian mystery novel, not a memoir, but Collins structures it as a series of first-person accounts from different characters, each revealing their own secrets and unreliable perspectives. Like Casanova, it's deeply interested in how people deceive themselves and others, and it has that same addictive quality where you're constantly discovering that characters aren't who they seemed. The prose has real elegance without being stuffy.

by Giacomo Casanova

Wait—hear me out. You've read an abridged third of the original. The unabridged Penguin Classics edition (translated by Willard R. Trask) contains passages and entire episodes cut from the popular version, including his time in Russia, his later years, and some of his most philosophically reflective writing. It's like discovering new rooms in a house you thought you knew.

by Roger Pearson

Stendhal was writing in the generation after Casanova, and his protagonist Fabrizio del Dongo moves through Italian courts and European capitals with similar energy and moral flexibility. But Stendhal is more interested in the *psychology* of ambition and desire—he gets inside his character's head in ways that feel almost modern. The novel has that same intoxicating mix of love, politics, and adventure, but filtered through a more analytical temperament.