Book Description

Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost Manon Lescaut (L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut) is a short novel by French author Abbe Prevost. Published in 1731, it is the seventh and final volume of Memoires et aventures d'un homme de qualite (Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality). It was controversial in its time and was banned in France upon publication. Despite this, it became very popular and pirated editions were widely distributed. In a subsequent 1753 edition, the Abbe Prevost toned down some scandalous details and injected more moralizing disclaimers. Friedrich (Frederick) Engels was born on 28 November 1820 in Barmen, Prussia (now Wuppertal, Germany). At the time, Barmen was an expanding industrial metropolis and Frederick was the eldest son of a wealthy German cotton manufacturer. His father, Friederich, Sr., was an evangelical. Accordingly, Engels was raised Christian Pietist. As he grew up, his relationship with his parents became strained because of his atheist beliefs. Parental disapproval of his revolutionary activities is recorded in an October 1848 letter from his mother, Elizabeth Engels. In this letter his mother berates him for having "really gone too far" and "begged" him "to proceed no further.." "You have paid more heed to other people, to strangers, and have taken no account of your mother's pleas. God alone knows what I have felt and suffered of late. I was trembling when I picked up the newspaper and saw therein that a warrant was out for my son's arrest." At the time this letter was written, Frederick Engels was in hiding in Brussels, Belgium, soon to make his way to Switzerland and then, in 1849, back into Germany for participation in the Baden and Palatinate revolutionary uprising.