[1] The story was first published in 1731 in Amsterdam as the seventh and final volume of Prévost's serial novel Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality (French: Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité).

On the novel's first publication, the characters' choices were seen as shockingly immoral: their decision to live together without marriage is the start of a moral decline that also leads to gambling, fraud, theft, and murder.

The novel was unusual for depicting Paris's "low life" and for discussing the lovers' money problems in numerical detail: both choices contribute to its realism and its aura of scandal.

Nineteenth-century responses saw her as a nearly mythological temptress, either a femme fatale who corrupts des Grieux or a hooker with a heart of gold who is redeemed through her death.

More recent scholarly analyses see Manon as a victim of broader social forces, who is misunderstood and misrepresented by des Grieux's narration of her experience.

The seventeen-year-old Chevalier des Grieux, a seminary student and the younger son of a noble family, falls in love at first sight with Manon, a common woman on her way to a convent.

In Paris, the young lovers enjoy a blissful cohabitation, while des Grieux struggles to satisfy Manon's taste for luxury.

He acquires money by increasingly desperate means: borrowing from his unwaveringly loyal friend Tiberge, cheating gamblers, stealing, and murder.

), prompting Manon to pursue a richer man for money because she cannot stand living in penury.Manon is deported to New Orleans as a prostitute and des Grieux travels with her.

[11] In this edition, Prévost modified some of his most sensationalist language,[11] added a new scene where Manon resists the seduction of an Italian prince,[12] and rewrote the ending to replace des Grieux's religious conversion with a more secular morality.

[13] The story is narrated as a long speech to the protagonist of Prévost's Mémoires et aventures, delivered by des Grieux nine months after Manon's death.

[18] The scholar Jean Sgard argues that all of Prévost's writing, including Manon Lescaut, is ultimately about "the impossibility of happiness, the pervasiveness of evil and the misfortune attaching to the passions," all of which lead to "mourning without end".

[22] Des Grieux's rejection of the priesthood in favor of a sexual relationship without marriage, and his crimes of fraud and murder, challenged readers' expectations of acceptable actions for the hero of a novel.

[23] Manon's willingness to have sex for money, and her general taste for pleasure and luxury, also seemed irreconcilable with her narrative role as a sympathetic love object.

[28] Manon is considered "the first commoner heroine in French fiction",[29] and the gulf in social rank between her and the noble des Grieux is an obstacle to their love.

[33] When both lovers are imprisoned for some of their crimes, des Grieux's aristocratic status shields him from the worst consequences while Manon ends up deported.

[30] As an aristocrat, des Grieux is barred from ordinary employment; he could earn a professional income in the church, the military, or the law, but only if he still had his father's support.

[39] Because Manon's words and actions are always related through the filter of des Grieux's restrospective storytelling, readers can speculate about her real thoughts, feelings, and intentions.

[40] The earliest reviews in 1733 saw Manon as sympathetic but unexpectedly so, a catin (whore) who was unworthy and yet appealing due to the sincerity of her love for des Grieux.

[46] Rather than being a simple, lighthearted girl of common birth, she was depicted as either a femme fatale who destroys des Grieux, or as a hooker with a heart of gold who is redeemed through her death.

"[46] The literary historian Naomi Segal summarizes this period as one in which most critics "tend to view Manon as if she were a real woman and to heap upon her all the myths which operate within sexual politics in the non-fictional world".

[48] For these readers, des Grieux's version of events is considered suspect,[49] and it is important to imagine how Manon might have narrated her story differently.

[48] Cultural-historical theorists see the novel as a conflict between aristocratic and bourgeois ideologies; Manon is marginalized by her class, but makes savvy decisions to strategically ensure her survival.

[51] Several adaptations translate the story to more recent time periods in French history, in which Manon is always a non-conformist who boldly pursues love despite disadvantaged circumstances.

[55][42] On October 5, the French censors (who needed to approve all new publications) seized the copies currently for sale due to the book's morally questionable content.

[46] In the late nineteenth century, editions were released with prefaces written by the famous French authors Alexandre Dumas fils in 1875 and Anatole France in 1878.

[59] Operatic adaptations of the novel are, in the words of the literary historian Jean Sgard, "both numerous and late" (French: "la fois nombreuse et tardive").

[70] The literary scholar Jean Sgard argues that, by reducing the complexity of the narrative, the theatrical adaptations present the lovers as being disproportionately punished for a single mistake, rather than capturing the novel's feeling of a gradual descent into immorality.

[59] He further argues that operatic adaptations are forced to focus on a one-note characterization of Manon,[71][c] and each opera's evaluation of her moral character is expressed in its depiction of her death.

[51] A pair of television miniseries directed by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade in 2014 and 2017 presents Manon as a contemporary young woman in a youth detention center[o] who is failed by social systems and lives precariously.