If you think of William Hogarth as a moralist who gave charitable support to foundlings and provided ethical guidance through his pictorial satires, then it is high time you changed your mind. This challenging, thoroughly researched and thought-provoking book reveals many new findings on Hogarth, showing us a different, hidden and immoral English artist: a carouser, a debauchee, and a spiteful joker who mercilessly attacked his contemporaries. Although a pictorial satirist and a successful print-dealer, Hogarth nevertheless wallowed in obscene amusement, frequented prostitutes, possibly had paedophilic tendencies, and seemingly died from the lingering effects of syphilis. Hogarth the popular painter and engraver is shown here as a dark humorist who dealt primarily in sexual double entendre and produced blasphemous motifs that satirically lambasted "high" religious art and debunked the eighteenth-century taste for Old Master work. This book ought to change the way we think about Hogarth.