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Paul D. Camp Community College is an equal opportunity affirmative action institution of higher learning serving the cities of Franklin and Suffolk and the counties of Southampton and Isle of Wight in southeastern Virginia.

Highlighting Special Collections

The Casanova Collection at Randolph-Macon College

Image from an 1870 edition of Histoire de ma vie by Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt.

The J. Rives Childs Collection of Casanoviana at Randolph-Macon College was a bequest from J. Rives Childs, a 1915 R-MC alumnus and retired diplomat, who collected extensively during his years in the Foreign Service in Europe and the Middle East. It is one of the world’s most extensive collections of rare editions of Casanova’s Memoires, consisting of over 2000 items including numerous rare volumes in many languages ranging from Norwegian to Arabic. In addition to the Memoires and writings of Casanova, the collection contains bibliographies, biographies, sales catalogs, correspondence, playbills, illustrations, operettas, films, and of course, the Casanova action figure.

Childs, a self-proclaimed "defender of Casanova as something other than the caricatures drawn of him by the mythmakers," published biographical and bibliographical works on Casanova, the great lover, spy, adventurer, author, and librarian.