1745, FRANCE: The french writer and novelist Abbé Antoine François Prevost d'Exiles (1697 1763). Engraved portrait by by Georg Friedrich Schmidt, 1745. Author of celebrated MANON LESCAUT (1731), later used for the librettos of Opera: by Daniel Aubert (1731, libretto by Eugène Scribe), by Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (1884 libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille) and Giacomo Puccini (1893, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa)