Originally published as the final installment of a seven-volume novel, Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité qui s'est retiré du monde (1728–31; “Memories and Adventures of a Man of Quality Who Has Retired from the World”), Prévost's Manon Lescaut is the basis of the operas Manon, by Jules Massenet, and Manon Lescaut, by Giacomo Puccini. A classic example of the 18th-century novel of feeling, Manon Lescaut tells the story of a young man of good family who ruins his life for a courtesan.

From an early age, Prévost displayed many of the weaknesses characteristic of the hero of his most famous work. Two enlistments in the army alternated with two entries into the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, from which he was dismissed in 1721. In that year he took vows as a Benedictine monk and in 1726 was ordained a priest. In 1728 he fled to England. One of his numerous love affairs caused him to lose his job there as a tutor and to go to Holland in 1730. In 1735 Prévost returned to England to escape his Dutch creditors and was briefly imprisoned in London for forgery. After secretly returning to France, he was reconciled with the Roman Catholic church (although he may have been a Protestant during his exile).