William Hogarth: A Life and a World

Description

The paintings and engravings of William Hogarth, the subject of this biography, have always been popular, but outside art history little is known about his life. He moved in the worlds of theatre, literature, journalism and politics, and found subjects for his work over the whole gamut of 18th-century London, from street scenes to drawing rooms, and from churches to gambling halls and prisons. Hogarth was made wealthy by his engravings for "The Harlot's Progress", but remained highly critical of the growing gulf between the luxurious lives of the ruling elite and the wretched poverty of the masses. Swift described him as a "pleasant rogue", and he numbered the likes of Pope and Horace Walpole among his friends.

Jenny Uglow grew up in Cumbria, and then Dorset. After leaving Oxford, she worked in publishing and is now an Editorial Director of Chatto and Windus, part of Random House. She reviews for radio and for the Times Literary Supplement, Sunday Times and the Guardian, and acts as historical consultant on several BBC 'classic serials', including Wives and Daughters, The Way We Live Now, Daniel Deronda, and the forthcoming Trollope adaptation He Knew He Was Right.Jenny is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, was on the Advisory Group for the Humanities of the British Library, and is Vice-President of the Gaskell Society and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick.Her own books include The Macmillan Dictionary of Women, now preparing its fourth edition; studies of George Eliot and Henry Fielding and the biographies Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories (1992) and Hogarth: A Life and a Wor