In both works, Lesage uses witty valets in the service of thieving masters, women of questionable morals, cuckolded yet happy husbands, gourmands, ridiculous poets, false savants, and dangerously ignorant doctors to make his point.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions reading Gil Blas in his Confessions (Book IV, 1731–1732), saying it came highly recommended by Mademoiselle du Chatelet who "had a taste for that kind of moral observation which leads to the knowledge of mankind".

The 1751 play Gil Blas by the British writer Edward Moore was performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with David Garrick in the title role.

The character Wanda von Dunajew ascribes the cause of her own free thinking to an early introduction to classical works; these include Gil Blas, which she read at the age of ten.

This signals that his own readers, like the two bachelors of Salamanca who discover Garcia's gravestone, will need to "fix on the moral concealed" beneath the surface of his recollections if they are to receive any benefit from them.

In his plan for the novel The Life of a Great Sinner, Dostoevsky notes that the concision of this work will at times mirror that of Gil Blas.

Charles Dickens, in American Notes for General Circulation and Pictures from Italy," invokes "the mysterious master of Gil Blas" in reference to a pig in New York City.

His implication is that the normal experiences of a young American, such as Holgrave, are so extraordinary in comparison with those of Gil Blas, that they make the latter's adventures seem ordinary.

Hawthorne then writes, "The experience of many individuals among us, who think it hardly worth the telling, would equal the vicissitudes of the Spaniard's earlier life; while their ultimate success ... may be incomparably higher than any that a novelist would imagine for a hero."

In Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr., the author describes the passengers aboard his ship the Alert, as it sailed along the California coast in 1836 from Monterey to Santa Barbara.

In The Social History of Bourbon (1963), Gerald Carson notes that the education of young men in antebellum Kentucky meant they "read law with the local judge, studied medicine at the Louisville Medical Institute, wrote stilted verses in the neoclassical fashion, read Gil Blas and books on surveying, farming, and distilling".

[7] Thomas Jefferson included Gil Blas in his list of recommendations to Robert Skipwith of books for a general personal library.

[9] In O homem que sabia javanês,[10] a short story by Lima Barreto, written in 1911 and published by Gazeta da Tarde, an allusion is made between the characters of Castelo and Gil Blas.

In chapter 5 of his Education of a Wandering Man, Louis L'Amour describes his "good fortune" in finding an abandoned copy of Gil Blas in a laundry room.

Gil Blas was the title of a five-act farcical opera by John Hamilton Reynolds adapting Lesage's novel, perhaps assisted by Thomas Hood, and first performed on 1 August 1822.

A French-Spanish co-production it was directed by René Jolivet and Ricardo Muñoz Suay and starred Georges Marchal as Gil Blas.