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.
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.
William Hogarth: A Life and a World by Jenny Uglow is a comprehensive study of the eighteenth-century and an unforgettable portrait of William Hogarth.
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
It is hard to imagine a more tempting subject for a biography than William Hogarth (1697-1764), a man whose life was so knotted up in the tangled issues of his time. His personal involvement in the new Foundling Hospital, in questions of copyright and the academy, allow Uglow (Elizabeth Gaskell) to reflect on social, philosophical and even commercial issues of the day. But it is mostly in her detailed and engrossing examination of the contexts and contents of Hogarth's work, particularly of his satires and his series‘A Rake's Progress, A Harlot's Progress, Marriage à la Mode‘that Uglow elucidates Hogarth's life and Georgian society. Having trained as an engraver, Hogarth had roots in an art that was timely and popular. In many ways, Hogarth had more in common with friends like Henry Fielding, David Garrick and Laurence Sterne than with colleagues in the visual arts. In his sharp awareness of human frailty, he is very much a descendant of Swift; he even continues Swift's Battle of the Books, in a different medium‘and on the side of the moderns. When many painters were aping anything Italian, particularly heroic history paintings, Hogarth was resolutely contemporary and English. As Uglow points out, "any fool could tell a pious tale, but true `morals' were inseparable from mores, the way people lived in their wild and glorious and dirty detail." It is this detail that Uglow brings to her portrait of the caustic, naïve, vain, witty, generous Hogarth, and to his equally complicated times. 200 b&w illustrations, 14 color plates. British, translation, dramatic rights: Faber & Faber. (Nov.) FYI: In November, Yale will publish a new edition of Hogarth's The Analysis of Beauty. ($30 200p ISBN 0-300-07335-6; $15 paper -07346-1); in December, Univ. of California will publish an exhibition catalogue called Hogarth and His Times by David Bindman. 170 b&w illustrations, 6 color plates. ($45 208p ISBN 0-520-21299-1; $29.95 -21300-9)
This life and times of William Hogarth provides the reader with a scholarly and readable one-volume biography of a major figure in English art. Although it does not replace the classic works of Ronald Paulson (e.g., Hogarth, Vol. 1: The Modern Moral Subject, 1697-1732, Rutgers Univ., 1991), it nevertheless examines Hogarth's life thoroughly and gives a full discussion of his work. The individual works of art are explained in great detail within the context of Hogarth's society; particularly interesting is the chapter "Factions and Elections," which demonstrates the background to the famous artworks on British parliamentary elections. The work has been carefully researched, and the insights are illuminating. Fascinating and very rewarding reading for both art and social historians of England, this volume is recommended for every public and academic library.‘Martin Chasin, Adult Inst., Bridgeport, Ct.
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