Francesco was born a Venetian citizen, and as a young adult worked as a secretary in the Venetian republic. He however left his position and country and travelled to France and Germany. He befriended the Count Maximilian Joseph von Lamberg and stayed at his palace for over a year in Landshut. The Count, known as a writer, was helped by Apostoli to compile a second volume of his opus Le Memorial d'une Mondaine. Returning to Venice, he adopted the pseudonymous pen-name and published in 1777 idiosyncratic letters to Lozembrune (1751-1801) about travels under the title Lettres et Contes sentimentaux de George Wanderson. The text also contained two semi-autobiographic short novels: Storia di Andrea and Saggezza della follia. In 1782, he published Saggio per servire alla storia de'viaggi filosofici e de' principi viaggiatori. However a few years later, even though married, he embarked on more travels only to find himself upon returning to Venice, under suspicion for indiscreet communications with the Republican French ambassador of Genoa, Tilly, and in 1794, arrested and condemned to work in Corfu under the local provveditore.Venice: Its Individual Growth from the Earliest Beginnings to the Fall of the Republic, Volume 6, by Pompeo Molmenti, translated by Horatio F Brown, Publisher AC McClurg and Co., Chicago (1908); page 98.Of note, Molmenti categorizes Apostoli among persons like Giacomo Casanova. He describes these adventurous persons as vagabonds in search of fortune either by their wits... or by roguery. Aggressive and insolet, of lively intelligence, double-minded, of smooth and pleasant address, meaning one thing and pretending another, thye caught the credulous in their net and, with no visible means of livelihood and no recognised profession, the managed by a thousand devices to satisfy their greed and to make good their lack of cash. Widowed of his first wife, he remarried.
