The story
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come is an allegory by the English preacher John Bunyan, published in London in 1678, with a second part in 1684. A man called Christian, carrying a burden of sin, leaves the City of Destruction and travels toward the Celestial City. On the way he meets figures such as Evangelist, Mr. Worldly Wiseman and Faithful, and passes through the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair and the Valley of the Shadow of Death before crossing the river to the gates of heaven.
Bunyan was a tinker from Bedfordshire who had fought on the Parliament side in the English Civil War and became a Nonconformist preacher. After the Restoration he was jailed for preaching without a license, and he wrote much of his work in Bedford gaol. The book's plain, vivid prose is shaped by the King James Bible, which he knew deeply, and by popular tales and sermons rather than by classical literature. The allegory is a way of turning inner religious experience into a story of roads, inns and monsters.
It was an immediate success among ordinary readers and became the most widely read religious book in English after the Bible for two centuries. It has been translated into more than 200 languages and dialects, and it influenced novels such as Vanity Fair and Little Women.
Why it mattered
- The book gave millions of ordinary Protestant readers a vivid, narrative picture of the spiritual life, and carried it through the British empire and missions.
- Its plain style, drawing on the English Bible, influenced later English fiction, and some scholars call it a forerunner of the English novel.
- Phrases such as Vanity Fair, Slough of Despond and Delectable Mountains entered everyday English.
Sources
- John Bunyan Poetry Foundation
- John Bunyan Britannica
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