Tobias Smollett, in the preface to his first novel, The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), acknowledges the influence of Alain Ren Le Sage's L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (1715-35 in four volumes) on his work. By far the most successful of "useful...
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization...