Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut

Published in 1731 as the seventh and last volume of Prévost's Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité. Copies were seized in Paris in 1733 for the morals of it, which sold the book. Prévost issued a revised standalone edition in 1753, softening the language and adding a scene, and that is the text usually reprinted. Massenet had already set the story as Manon in 1884, nine years before Puccini.