Abbé Prévost, 1697 - 1763
Novelist Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles was born in Hesdin, and he was educated there at a Jesuit school. He was ordained a priest in the Benedictine Order in 1726 and abandoned the order two years later, living several years in England and Holland.
Prévost is best known for "Memoires et Aventures d'un Homme de Qualite" (Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality, 7 vol., 1728-1731). The seventh volume is "Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut" (1731), which is popularly known as Manon Lescaut. The novel chronicles the tragic romance of a young aristocrat and a courtesan and was inspired by the operas Manon (1884), by Jules Massenet, and Manon Lescaut (1893), by Giacomo Puccini. His novels with English themes, as well as his translations of the British novelist Samuel Richardson, encouraged French interest in English literature. Those titles included "Pamela" (1742) and Clarissa" (1751).
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