"In this original book, Mark Hallett offers a new perspective on English satirical prints of the first half of the eighteenth century, recovering their dual status as ambitious works of graphic art and as eloquent pictorial commentaries on urban culture and politics. Hallett examines the distinctive characteristics of graphic satire as an artistic genre and as a vehicle of social and political critique. He investigates a wide variety of the most important graphic satires of the period, from the celebrated engravings of William Hogarth to those of other inventive artists like John Sturt, Anthony, Walker, John June, Hubert Francois Gravelot and the two George Bickhams. He shows how contemporary satirists mixed the materials of high and low art to create hybrid and provocative images that dealt with a broad range of controversial issues, including alcoholism, the excesses of fashion, financial collapse, freemasonry, political corruption and prostitution."--BOOK JACKET.