Antoine-François Prévost d'Exiles

Max Shrem (Independent Scholar - North America)

Ed. by Kathrina LaPorta, New York University, Jenny Mander, University of Cambridge
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.04: French Writing and Culture: Eighteenth-Century and the Enlightenment, 1700-1800.
Vol. editors: Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Jenny Mander (University of Cambridge), Síofra Pierse (University College Dublin), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

Born 1 Apr 1696
Died 25 Nov 1763
Activity 1716-1763

Places

Born in France
Active in France

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Resources

Little is known about the life of the Abbé Prévost. Despite scholars’ efforts to demystify his life, his biography reads as if it were itself a novel. This is partly due to an ill-advised heir who had the author’s last posthumous works burned in 1844. Today, most of what scholars know about him comes from Henri Roddier’s L’Abbé Prévost L’Homme et l’œuvre (1955).

Antoine François Prévost was born to a family of civil officers on April 1, 1697 in Hesdin, near Montreuil-sur-Mer. Although he was a diligent student, he fled his Jesuit school in 1712 because of a love affair and enlisted in the royal army. After the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) …

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2385 words

Citation: Shrem, Max. "Antoine-François Prévost d'Exiles". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 July 2018 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3634, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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