A Harlot's Progress of six prints to subscribers for a Guinea. Pirate copies of the engravings were soon in circulation, and Hogarth procured a 1735 Act of Parliament (8 Geo. II. cap. 13) to prohibit the practice. Soon after, Hogarth published his second series of satirical and moralistic images, "A Rake's Progress", followed ten years later by "Marriage à-la-mode". The original paintings were destroyed in a fire at Fonthill House in 1755, the country house of William Beckford (1709–1770), a politician and father of William Thomas Beckford (1 October 1760 – 2 May 1844) builder of Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire. The original plates
Pamela (paintings) comparison with William Hogarth's contemporary series such as "Marriage A-la-Mode", "A Rake's Progress" and "A Harlot's Progress", also painted for the print market, but it differs from them in that they derive from a concrete literary source rather than the artist's own plot-lines. Art historians see the "Pamela" series as placing Highmore alongside Hogarth and Hayman as "one of the initiators of a British school of narrative painting". Though Highmore's paintings were intended as treatments of scenes from the novel rather than strictly as illustrations, Highmore and Richardson became close friends, with the former painting the latter's portrait as well