William Hogarth was often very quick to respond to current events or new trends in the cultural life of London. His “Just View of the British Stage,” for example, was announced as “just published” on December 10, 1724, a mere two weeks after Harlequin Sheppard had premiered. But his prints were sometimes less immediate in their timing. His 1747 series of twelve engravings, titled “Industry and Idleness,” depicts the simultaneous rise and fall of two individuals, Francis Goodchild and Tom Idle. The latter, it has been suggested, might have been inspired by John Sheppard. Whether rapid or leisurely, Hogarth's production is generally understood as a reaction, a response to the subject matter he treated. In this chapter I will deal with a “progress” from 1732—his earliest— that served as the springboard for a cluster of cultural artifacts in which Hogarth found himself the target of responses from others, rather than a commentator himself. To be sure, the subject matter of his “A Harlot's Progress” was very serious, and represents a very potent reaction he had to the tragic fate of young and innocent girls, recently arrived in London from a rural background, who found themselves pushed into a life of prostitution. The responders to Hogarth's progress, quite astonishingly, detached themselves entirely from the grim reality the artist presents (albeit with several satirical jabs in a number of directions), and used it as a platform for comic or, at best, lighthearted entertainments. They betray no sympathy whatsoever to the plight of Hogarth's Harlot, likely because she represented a rather ghastly underside to the urban life they preferred to celebrate.

In this chapter I first describe the six prints Hogarth prepared, and the narrative they convey. My descriptions of the plates are far from comprehensive, neither are they intended to be. Deconstructions of Hogarth's progress are best left to individuals more qualified than I. The aim in my treatment is to identify and highlight a selection of elements that I find central to the dissemination of Hogarth's tale in other forms. I next plot in chronological sequence (so far as this is possible) the earliest reactions Hogarth's progress engendered.