Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles, usually known simply as the Abbé Prévost, was a French author and novelist.
Background
He was born on April 1, 1697, at Hesdin, Artois, and first appears with the full name of Prévost d'Exiles, in a letter to the booksellers of Amsterdam in 1731. His father, Lievin Prévost, was a lawyer, and several members of the family had embraced the ecclesiastical estate.
Education
Prévost was educated at the Jesuit school of Hesdin, and in 1713 became a novice of the order in Paris, pursuing his studies at the same time at the college in La Flèche.
Career
He entered the Benedictine order, but fled from the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris to finish his novel Mémoires d'un homme de qualité (1728 - 1731), the last volume of which is the simple and passionate story of Manon Lescaut. Prévost passed seven years in England and Holland. On his return to France he founded a gazette, Le pour et le contre (1733 - 1740), in which he emphasized material drawn from English life and letters. Reconciled with the Benedictines, he became the chaplain of the Prince de Conti, but he continued to write tender and melodramatic novels, collaborated on several journals, and translated, among other English works, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Pamela, and Sir Charles Grandison. These translations of Richardson, freely adapted to French taste, became enormously popular and helped to turn French attention to English literature. Of Prévost's novels, only Manon Lescaut, one of the great love stories of world literature and, in settings by Jules Massenet and Giacomo Puccini, a staple of the operatic repertory, continues to be of general interest.