ABSTRACT
Since its first appearance in the 1730s William Hogarth’s visual narrative, A Harlot’s Progress, has attracted widespread attention. Its popularity was manifest in numerous adaptations in various media and forms, a trend in creative responses to Hogarth that continues to the present day. Two contemporary novels, David Dabydeen’s A Harlot’s Progress and Michael Dean’s I, Hogarth, engage with this adaptive culture by incorporating Hogarth’s work into verbal narratives that provoke questions surrounding marginalisation, corrupt economies, race, gender and artistic creativity. These two novels also use their novelistic responses to Hogarth’s art to engage with ongoing discussions surrounding the relationship between word and image, and the ability for a story told in one form to be transferred into another – issues as pertinent to Hogarth’s day as now.
