In Literature
Charteris was the inspiration for the characters in William Hogarths paintings, A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress (where he is represented as the fat lecher in the first plate), and in Fanny Hill. He was condemned by Alexander Pope in his Moral Essay III, written in 1733. Parallels were drawn between Charteris' sexual excesses, and the greed of politicians such as Robert Walpole. Some sources say that he was a founding member of the Hellfire Club, although the famous club founded by Francis Dashwood did not begin to meet until 1743. He may have been a member of the original "Hell-Fire Club" founded by Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton in 1720. Leslie Charteris, creator of Simon Templar, The Saint, was a later admirer, and legally changed his surname to Charteris from Bowyer-Yin.
Read more about this topic: Francis Charteris (rake)
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“This is not “writing” at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, that, in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours.”
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