Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality

Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality, Who Withdrew from the World was the first novel of the eighteenth-century French priest and writer Antoine François Prévost. It was published in seven volumes, four in Paris in 1728 and three more in Amsterdam in 1731.

The novel is narrated in the first person by the unnamed "Man of Quality". He has a brief career in the French military, then spends six years enslaved in Turkey. After being freed, he marries a Turkish woman; she dies, and he raises their daughter in France. At their daughter's marriage, he retires to a monastery, but is persuaded to leave it in order to escort a young Marquis on his Grand Tour. The Marquis has a tragic romance in Spain, then travels to Portugal, Holland, and England, where they witness the Jacobite rising of 1715. The Marquis's second romance, with the narrator's Turkish niece, also ends badly and the narrator retires to his monastery again. The seventh and final volume contains the story of Manon Lescaut.

The novel was appreciated in the eighteenth century for its emotionally powerful tragedy, and inspired stylistic imitators in French literature. The majority of the work has been overshadowed by the enduring success of the volume seven story of Manon Lescaut, which was later published as a standalone novel and became a historical classic of French literature. Scholars have analyzed the overall novel's depiction of supernatural events and France's diplomatic relationship with Turkey, but modern readers largely ignore all but the last volume of the Memoirs and Adventures.