Mary Hogarth beautiful and light-hearted". When Robert Story visited the Hogarth household in 1836, he described Hogarth as "the fairest flower of spring". Dickens showed particular affection to Hogarth, and described her as "a close friend, an exceptional sister, a companion at home." It is believed that Hogarth was the first person to read "The Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist", as Dickens valued Hogarth's input and feedback more than his wife's. In the early hours of 7 May 1837, after Hogarth had returned from a showing of "Is She His Wife?" at the St James's Theatre with the Dickens couple, she collapsed
Hogarth Club suggested that the club be named after William Hogarth since Hogarth was "a painter whom he deeply reverenced as the originator of moral invention and drama in modern art". Brown and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had worked on some previous independent exhibitions, but became determined to form a permanent exhibition space after the rejection of Pre-Raphaelite work by the Academy in 1857. In response they created their own exhibition, later founding the Hogarth Club in tandem with other sympathetic artists, most notably William Holman Hunt and John Roddam Spencer Stanhope. Despite initial success, the Hogarth Club failed to maintain its momentum,