To tone your thighs fast - three words ladies - squats and walking lunges. I took a fitness bootcamp for women last fall. We met three times a week and these two exercises were at the core of each meeting. My husband noticed a difference after week one.
Don Quijote de la Manca by the Spanish author Cervantes has such a role in the Western literary tradition, that it's hard to mention anything posterior to it as the first fiction novel. Jerry mentioned Moll Flanders. That's a nice pick: the very novel that combined literature of roguery and picaresque novel.
The first Gothic novel written was <i>The Castle of Otranto</i> by Horace Walpole, in 1764. He wrote it based on a dream he had, in which he found himself in an ancient castle. Other authors of Gothic novels used his ideas and themes to write their own stories later on.