Plate one, from A Harlot's Progress

One of Hogarth’s four major print cycles of “modern moral subjects” based on his paintings, A Harlot’s Progress is a tale of innocence led astray. As indicated by its title, which subverts that of John Bunyan’s popular Christian allegory, the 1678 Pilgrim’s Progress, Hogarth’s project traces a country girl’s loss of purity and resulting imprisonment, illness, and death. Here the gullible girl, Moll Hackabout, is seduced by the promises of a historical madam, Mother Needham, who is dressed respectably to lure naïve London newcomers into her fashionable brothel.