by the celebrated minister John Bunyan of Bedfordshire.
The Pilgrim's Progress is, well, sui generis. Tradition holds that
John Bunyan wrote it in Bedford Gaol, while imprisoned for the crime of holding
a religious service not in conformity with the Church of England. Bunyan spent
twelve years in Bedford Gaol for that offense, which helps to explain why
nonconformists liked to emigrate to America when they could.
Anyone familiar with this extraordinary work will agree with Samuel Johnson's
assessment of John Bunyan, made nearly 100 years after the first publication of
Pilgim's Progress and reported by James Boswell in his Life of Samuel
Johnson, LL.D.:
Johnson praised John Bunyan highly. "His Pilgrim's Progress has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote. There is reason to think that he had read Spenser."
The illustrations below come from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, With Over One Hundred Illustrations Designed by Frederick Barnard and Others, Engraved by Dalziel Borthers (The John C. Winston Company, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Toronto, 1894). To download a larger .BMP version of the images below, just click the image.
