A Rake's Progress

Sharp, funny, morally complicated, endlessly interested in the city's crowds and contradictions.

Fig appears in Hogarth's work, including Southwark Fair and the second plate of A Rake's Progress.

In the latter, Fig is among the instructors shaping the young rake's life.

It is a revealing appearance.

[laughs] Yeah, very tangled web.

It, uh, it's an, it's, uh, an extraordinary song, and at the time that I first, uh, became, um, uh, aware of it, uh, there was, uh, a, a myth around the song, uh, about its creation and its origins, and I was interested enough that I did write a book, um, which I called The Unfortunate Rake, um, referring to, uh, A Rake's Progress.

And, uh, excuse me, A Rake's Progress referring to, uh, An Unfortunate Rake, and found out that everything that I had been reading about and researching was incorrect.

They were assumptions, and they didn't properly reflect the story of the song itself, a much more mysterious song and much more veiled, uh, origins.

And so tell us first how you came to be interested in the song, and then tell us about the misattribution and how that all got started.