A Harlot’s Progress

A Harlot’s Progress reinvents William Hogarth’s famous prints of 1732 which tell the story of a whore, a Jewish merchant, a magistrate and a quack doctor bound together by sexual and financial greed.

David Dabydeen’s novel endows Hogarth’s characters with alternative potential lives, redeeming them from their cliched status as predators or victims. The protagonist - in Hogarth, a black slave boy, in Dabydeen, London’s oldest black inhabitant - tells his story to the Abolitionists in return for their charity. But instead of embarking upon yet another fictional journey into the dark nature of slavery for the voyeuristic delight of the English reader he spins a tale of myths, half-truths, and fantasies, presenting a dazzling array of lives: recreating Africa and 18th century London in startlingly poetic ways.