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
Marriage A-la-Mode (Hogarth) the engraver views it in a mirror as he undertakes the engraving. Hogarth was an engraver himself and disliked this course of action using mirrors, so unusually, he produced the paintings for Marriage à-la-mode already reversed so the engraver could directly copy them. It would normally be expected to view the series of prints moving from left to right and Hogarth would have taken this into account when composing the original paintings. Commentators have used a variety of names for the individual paintings, but as the paintings are presently in the National Gallery the names used there are used here.