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)
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers—such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)