The Pilgrim's Progress

About AuthorJohn Bunyan (28 November 1628 - 31 August 1688) was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing The Pilgrim's Progress. In the Church of England, he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August.Bunyan was born in Harrowden (one mile southeast of Bedford), in the Parish of Elstow, England. He was baptized John Bunyan, on November 30, 1628 as recorded in the Elstow parish register. The family has a long history in England and the name has been found spelled over thirty-four different ways: Binyan, Buniun, Bonyon, Buignon, being the most common - Bunyan being the most recent.John Bunyan was born to Thomas Bunyan and Margaret Bently; she was also from Elstow and she, like her husband, was born in 1603. They married on May 27, 1627 and in 1628 Margaret's sister, Rose Bently, married Thomas' half-brother Edward Bunyan. (Thomas had married his first wife in 1623 and like his father before him, would marry two more times within months of being widowed.) They were working-class people with Thomas earning a living as a tinker or brazier; one who mends kettles and pots. Bunyan wrote of his modest origins, "My descent was of a low and inconsiderable generation, my father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families of the land".He had very little schooling (about 2-4 years). He was educated at his father's house with other poor country boys and what little education he received was to benefit his father and his own future trade. He followed his father in the Tarish Tinker's trade, which at the time had a reputation as being a lowly sort of occupation and was associated historically with the nomadic lifestyle of gypsies.In 1644, at the age of sixteen, Bunyan lost his mother and two sisters, all who died within months of each other; and his father married for the third time. It may have been the arrival of his stepmother that precipitated his estrangement and subsequent enlistment in the parliamentary army. He served in the parliamentary army at Newport Pagnell garrison (1644-1647) as the civil war was nearing the end of the first stage. He was saved from death by a fellow soldier who volunteered to go into battle in his place and was killed while walking sentry duty[1].After the civil war was won by The Parliamentarians, Bunyan returned to his former trade and eventually found a wife. In 1649 (when he was about 21), he married a young woman, Mary, whose only dowry appears to have been two books, Arthur Dent's Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and Lewis Bayly's Practice of Piety, by which he was influenced towards a religious life. She was an orphan, her father leaving only those two books as her inheritance, and their life was modest to say the least. Bunyan writes that they were "as poor as poor might be", not even "a dish or spoon between them".In his autobiographical book, Grace Abounding, Bunyan describes himself as having led an abandoned life in his youth, and as having been morally reprehensible as a result. However, there appears to be no evidence that he was outwardly worse than the average of his neighbours. Examples of sins to which he confesses in Grace Abounding are profanity, dancing and bell-ringing. The increasing awareness of his un-Biblical life led him to contemplate acts of impiety and profanity; in particular, he was harassed by a curiosity in regard to the "unpardonable sin," and a prepossession that he had already committed it.Product DescriptionThe Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come is a Christian allegory written by John Bunyan and published in February, 1678. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been out of print.