The story of Manon Lescaut is a tale of passion and betrayal, of delinquency and misalliance, which moves from eighteenth-century Paris - with its theatres, assemblies, and gaming-houses - via prison and deportation to a tragic denouement among the treeless waste of Louisiana. It is one of the great love stories, and also one of the most enigmatic. This new translation includes the vignette and eight illustrations that were published in the edition of 1753.