§ 01 · Introduction
Bunyan was a tinker and a Baptist preacher who spent twelve years in Bedford jail for preaching without a license. He wrote most of The Pilgrim's Progress there. It was published in 1678, went through eleven editions in his lifetime, and has never been out of print since.
The story is an allegory and does not hide it. A man named Christian, burdened by a great weight on his back, flees the City of Destruction and travels toward the Celestial City. On the way he meets Evangelist, Worldly Wiseman, Faithful, Hopeful, Giant Despair, and the whole cast whose names have passed into the language — the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, the Delectable Mountains. A second part, published in 1684, follows his wife Christiana on the same road.
Read it as Bunyan intended: as a story first. The marginal scripture references show where each scene comes from, and the plain seventeenth-century English is easier than it looks after the first few pages.