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Why did William Hogarth delay publishing A Rake’s Progress?
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William Hogarth
The Painter and His Pug, self-portrait by William Hogarth, oil on canvas, 1745; in the Tate Gallery, London.
William Hogarth delayed the publication of his eight-part series A Rake’s Progress to protect his work from being illegally copied by others.
During this period, Hogarth actively campaigned for legislation to secure artists' copyright. He withheld the release of the series until the passage of a law in 1735, which became known as the Hogarth Act, successfully safeguarding his livelihood from the distribution of unscrupulously pirated editions.1