A Harlot's Progress | |
---|---|
Written by | Clive Bradley |
Directed by | Justin Hardy |
Starring | Toby Jones Zoe Tapper Sophie Thompson Richard Wilson |
Theme music composer | Richard Blair-Oliphant |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Producers | Clare Alan Lucy Bassnett-McGuire |
Cinematography | Douglas Hartington |
Editor | Michael Harrowes |
Original release | |
Network | Channel 4 |
Release | 2 November 2006 |
A Harlot's Progress is a 2006 British television film directed by Justin Hardy and starring Zoe Tapper, Toby Jones, Sophie Thompson and Richard Wilson. [1] The story is based on the series of paintings entitled A Harlot's Progress by William Hogarth. Hogarth's work is inspired by his interactions with an eighteenth-century prostitute Mary Collins. It originally aired on Channel 4 on 2 November 2006.
William Hogarth was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects", and he is perhaps best known for his series A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode. Familiarity with his work is so widespread that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".
Hogarth's House is the former country home of the 18th-century English artist William Hogarth in Chiswick, adjacent to the A4. The House now belongs to the London Borough of Hounslow and is open to visitors as a historic house museum free of charge. Chiswick is now one of London's western suburbs, but in the 18th century it was a large village or small town quite separate from the metropolis, but within easy reach of it. Today the house is a Grade I listed building.
A Rake's Progress is a series of eight paintings by 18th-century English artist William Hogarth. The canvases were produced in 1732–1734, then engraved in 1734 and published in print form in 1735. The series shows the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, the spendthrift son and heir of a rich merchant, who comes to London, wastes all his money on luxurious living, prostitution and gambling, and as a consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam). The original paintings are in the collection of Sir John Soane's Museum in London, where they are normally on display for a short period each day.
Sophie Thompson is a British actress. She has worked in film, television and theatre and she won the 1999 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for the London revival of Into the Woods. She has been nominated for the Olivier Award five other times for Wildest Dreams (1994), Company (1996), Clybourne Park (2011) Guys and Dolls (2016) and Present Laughter (2019).
A Harlot's Progress is a series of six paintings and engravings (1732) by the English artist William Hogarth. The series shows the story of a young woman, M. Hackabout, who arrives in London from the country and becomes a prostitute. The series was developed from the third image. After painting a prostitute in her boudoir in a garret on Drury Lane, Hogarth struck upon the idea of creating scenes from her earlier and later life. The title and allegory are reminiscent of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
Zoë Tapper is an English actress who first came to prominence playing Nell Gwynne in Richard Eyre's award-winning film Stage Beauty in 2004. She is known for portraying Anya Raczynski in Survivors and Mina Harker in Demons.
David Dabydeen FRSL is a Guyanese-born broadcaster, novelist, poet and academic. He was formerly Guyana's Ambassador to UNESCO from 1997 to 2010, and was the youngest Member of the UNESCO Executive Board (1993–1997), elected by the General Council of all Member States of UNESCO. He was appointed Guyana's Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinaire to China, from 2010 to 2015. He is one of the longest serving diplomats in the history of Guyana, most of his work done in a voluntary unpaid capacity. He is a cousin of Guyana-born Canadian writer Cyril Dabydeen.
The Eric Gregory Award is a literary award given annually by the Society of Authors for a collection by British poets under the age of 30. The award was founded in 1960 by Dr. Eric Gregory to support and encourage young poets.
Richard Rock was a well-known doctor in eighteenth-century London. Originally from Hamburg, he was depicted by William Hogarth in the fifth scene of his 1731/2 satirical and moralistic series, A Harlot's Progress, where he stands in dispute with notable French doctor John Misaubin beside the dying body of their patient, Moll Hackabout. The contrast between Rock and Misaubin is intentional. Misaubin is easily recognised by his notably tall and thin appearance, but the second doctor was harder to identify with certainty, so Hogarth added his name on a slip of paper on the stool to the lower right of the scene in later printings.
The Romantic Novelists' Association (RNA) is the professional body representing authors of romantic fiction in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1960 by Denise Robins, Barbara Cartland, Vivian Stuart, and other authors including Elizabeth Goudge, Netta Muskett, Catherine Cookson, Rosamunde Pilcher and Lucilla Andrews.
The Mechanics' Institute Review is an annual literary anthology published by Birkbeck, University of London, as part of its MA Creative Writing course. The MIR Project Director is Julia Bell.
Four Times of the Day is a series of four oil paintings by English artist William Hogarth. They were completed in 1736 and in 1738 were reproduced and published as a series of four engravings. They are humorous depictions of life in the streets of London, the vagaries of fashion, and the interactions between the rich and poor. Unlike many of Hogarth's other series, such as A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress, Industry and Idleness, and The Four Stages of Cruelty, it does not depict the story of an individual, but instead focuses on the society of the city in a humorous manner. Hogarth does not offer a judgment on whether the rich or poor are more deserving of the viewer's sympathies. In each scene, while the upper and middle classes tend to provide the focus, there are fewer moral comparisons than seen in some of his other works. Their dimensions are about 74 cm (29 in) by 61 cm (24 in) each.
The Old Curiosity Shop is a British television film adapted from the Charles Dickens's 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop. It stars Irish actress Sophie Vavasseur as Nell Trent, with Derek Jacobi as her grandfather, Toby Jones as Quilp and George MacKay as Nell's friend, Kit. It was broadcast on 26 December 2007 on ITV. The adaptation is in general very faithful to the novel. The most significant changes are the removal of the Garlands and their household and the identity of the Single Gentleman who is changed from Grandfather's brother to his estranged son and Nell's father.
Columbus Breaking the Egg is a 1752 engraving by English artist William Hogarth. Issued as the subscription ticket for his treatise on art, The Analysis of Beauty, it depicts an apocryphal tale concerning Christopher Columbus's response to detractors of his discovery of the New World. Hogarth uses the story as a parallel to what he considered his own discoveries in art.
Elizabeth Needham, also known as Mother Needham, was an English procuress and brothel-keeper of 18th-century London, who has been identified as the bawd greeting Moll Hackabout in the first plate of William Hogarth's series of satirical etchings, A Harlot's Progress. Although Needham was notorious in London at the time, little is recorded of her life, and no genuine portraits of her survive. Her house was the most exclusive in London and her customers came from the highest strata of fashionable society, but she eventually ran afoul of the moral reformers of the day and died as a result of the severe treatment she received after being sentenced to stand in the pillory.
Mark Louis Hallett is an English art historian specialising in the history of British art. He is the Märit Rausing Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art.