Published in 1731, it is the seventh and final volume of Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité (Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality).

The story, set in France and Louisiana in the early 18th century, follows the hero, the Chevalier des Grieux, and his lover, Manon Lescaut.

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 have sex with 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.

[4] The preface, titled "Avis de l'Auteur" ("Note from the author"), explains that the story seemed too large to include within the main narrative.

[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 delivered as a long speech to the protagonist of Prévost's Mémoires et aventures, who is known only as "the man of quality" (French: Homme de Qualité), narrated 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 decision to have sex for money at several points in the novel, 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.

[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 unexpectedly sympathetic, 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 corrupts 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 new time periods and historical situation, in which Manon is always a non-conformist who boldly pursues love despite disadvantaged circumstances.

[53] The prefatory "Foreword to the Reader", which claims to explain and justify the narrative, presents Manon and Tiberge as representatives of passion and friendship, or vice and virtue, who compete for des Grieux's allegiance.

[58][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.

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