Manon Lescaut

A seventeen-year-old chevalier meets a girl being sent to a convent against her will, and throws over his family, his studies and eventually his honor to keep her — repeatedly, each time worse. Prévost was a Benedictine who twice fled his order; the book was burned in Paris and read everywhere, and gave opera two of its warhorses. Its cruelty is that neither lover can be blamed and neither can stop. Its 77 original illustrations have been carefully restored and coloured for this edition.