Manon Lescaut: Newly Translated and Annotated
By (Author) Antoine Franois Prvost
Alma Books Ltd
Alma Classics
7th January 2020
30th October 2019
United Kingdom
Paperback
192
176g
When the young nobleman Des Grieux lays eyes on the beautiful and charming lower-class Manon Lescaut, he immediately falls in love with her and runs away with her to Paris, incurring the wrath of his family and forfeiting his inheritance. However, he struggles to satisfy her taste for luxury, frittering away the little he has left, and his domestic bliss finally disintegrates when he finds out that Manon has taken a rich lover. Although causing scandal when it was first published in 1731 and subsequently banned, Manon Lescaut proved very popular with eighteenth-century readers and circulated in pirated editions. The basis for Puccinis famous opera, Abb Prvosts ground-breaking tale of passion and tragedy became hugely influential on the next generation of novelists.
Antoine Franois Prvost (16971763) was a Benedictine monk who left the order and moved to England and the Netherlands and became an author under the name Abb Prvost. He is now best known for his novel Manon Lescaut, but he wrote many other volumes of fiction, history and travel writing, as well as translating the works of Samuel Richardson among others.