The Pilgrim's Progress

The Pilgrim's Progress
First edition title page
AuthorJohn Bunyan
Original titleThe Pilgrim's Progreſs from This World, to That Which Is to Come
CountryEngland
LanguageEnglish
GenreReligious allegory
Publication date
1678 (first volume)
1684 (second volume)
828.407
LC ClassPR3330.A2 K43
TextThe Pilgrim's Progress at Wikisource

The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come is a 1678 Christian allegory written by John Bunyan. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of theological fiction in English literature and a progenitor of the narrative aspect of Christian media.[1][2][3][4][5][6] It has been translated into more than 200 languages and has never been out of print.[7][8] It appeared in Dutch in 1681, in German in 1703 and in Swedish in 1727. The first North American edition was issued in 1681.[9] It has also been cited as the first novel written in English.[10] According to literary editor Robert McCrum, "there's no book in English, apart from the Bible, to equal Bunyan's masterpiece for the range of its readership, or its influence on writers as diverse as William Hogarth, C. S. Lewis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, George Bernard Shaw, William Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and Enid Blyton."[11][12] The words on which the hymn "To be a Pilgrim" is based, come from the novel.

Bunyan began his work while in the Bedfordshire county prison for violations of the Conventicle Act 1664, which prohibited the holding of religious services outside the auspices of the established Church of England. Early Bunyan scholars such as John Brown believed The Pilgrim's Progress was begun in Bunyan's second, shorter imprisonment for six months in 1675,[13] but more recent scholars such as Roger Sharrock believe that it was begun during Bunyan's initial, more lengthy imprisonment from 1660 to 1672 right after he had written his spiritual autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.[14]

The English text comprises 108,260 words and is divided into two parts, each reading as a continuous narrative with no chapter divisions. The first part was completed in 1677 and entered into the Stationers' Register on 22 December 1677. It was licensed and entered in the "Term Catalogue" on 18 February 1678, which is looked upon as the date of first publication.[15] After the first edition of the first part in 1678, an expanded edition, with additions written after Bunyan was freed, appeared in 1679. The Second Part appeared in 1684. There were eleven editions of the first part in John Bunyan's lifetime, published in successive years from 1678 to 1685 and in 1688, and there were two editions of the second part, published in 1684 and 1686.

  1. ^ "The two parts of The Pilgrim's Progress in reality constitute a whole, and the whole is, without doubt, the most influential religious book ever written in the English language" (Alexander M. Witherspoon in his introduction, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (New York: Pocket Books, 1957), vi.
  2. ^ Bunyan, John, The Pilgrim's Progress, W. R. Owens, ed., Oxford World's Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), xiii.
  3. ^ Richardson, Abby Sage, Familiar Talks on English Literature: A Manual (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1892), 221.
  4. ^ "For two hundred years or more no other English book was so generally known and read" (James Baldwin, Foreword, John Bunyan's Dream Story (New York: American Book Co., 1913), 6.
  5. ^ "Pilgrim's Progress – new impact for a new generation". AFA Journal. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
  6. ^ Sullivan, W.F. (2011). Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the Constitution. Princeton University Press. p. 164. ISBN 978-0-691-15253-0. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
  7. ^ Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, ed. Owens (2003), xiii: "...the book has never been out of print. It has been published in innumerable editions, and has been translated into over two hundred languages."
  8. ^ Cross, F. L., ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 1092 sub loco.
  9. ^ Lyons, M. (2011). Books: A Living History. Getty Publications.
  10. ^ Chapman, J. (1892). The Westminster Review, Volume 138. p. 610.
  11. ^ McCrum, Robert (23 September 2013). "The 100 best novels: No 1 – The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1678)". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  12. ^ Forrest and Greaves 1982: xii
  13. ^ Brown, John, John Bunyan: His Life, Times and Work (1885, revised edition 1928).
  14. ^ Bunyan, John, The Pilgrim's Progress, ed. with an introduction by Roger Sharrock (Harmondsworth: Penguins Books, 1965), pp. 10, 59, 94, 326–27, 375.
  15. ^ "The copy for the first edition of the First Part of The Pilgrim's Progress was entered in the Stationers' Register on 22 December 1677 ... The book was licensed and entered in the Term Catalogue for the following Hilary Term, 18 February 1678; this date would customarily indicate the time of publication, or only slightly precede it" [John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, James Blanton Wharey and Roger Sharrock, eds, Second Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), xxi].

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