Industry and Idleness

Industry and Idleness is the title of a series of 12 plot-linked engravings created by William Hogarth in 1747, intending to illustrate to working children the possible rewards of hard work and diligent application and the sure disasters attending a lack of both. Unlike his earlier works, such as A Harlot's Progress (1731) and Marriage à-la-mode (1743), which were painted first and subsequently converted to engravings, Industry and Idleness was created solely as a set of engravings. Each of the prints was sold for 1 shilling each so 12 for the entire set, which is equivalent in purchasing power to approximately 80 GBP as of 2005. It may be assumed that these prints were aimed for a wider and less wealthy market than his earlier works. The originals currently reside at the British Museum.

Hogarth was far from the first to attempt to dramatically display parallel lives leading from the same start to opposite ends. Paulson suggests two: the plays "Eastward Hoe" (Revived after Hogarth's publication of these) and "The London Merchant", the latter containing the especially applicable quote that "business [is] the youth's best preservative from ill, as idleness [is] the worst of snares". He also suggests that Hogarth already had the idea when he painted "Hudibras and the Lawyer" with its 2 (industrious and idle) clerks.

Each print shows a representative or important scene at some point in the life of one of the protagonists (In two plates, both are shown together). Together, the seven appearances of Francis Goodchild and Thomas Idle show their steady paths up the social and political ladder to the pinnacle of power and esteem and down the path of immorality and crime to complete disgrace and legal infamy, respectively. Each appearance is also accompanied by some explanatory or foreshadowing text from the Bible.

This latter was supposedly picked out by a friend of Hogarth's, Rev. Arnold King.

The plates show one of the two apprentices at some stage in their life, alternating between one 'prentice and the other (Industrious, Idle, Industrious, etc.) with the exceptions of 1 and 10 where both are shown. Each has a Biblical quotation relevant to the scene.

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