Author(s): Iain McCalman

Biography

Guiseppe Balsamo, the Count of Cagliostro, was an 18th-century Sicilian who became a magician, a mystic, a healer, a Freemason, swindler and, last but not least, a pornographer. He was famous throughout Europe, and so popular in France that his imprisonment for allegedly stealing a diamond necklace from Marie Antoinette fanned the flames of revolution ...

The Count was so controversial that he became the central figure in both Goethe