John Bunyan

The Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan Deseret Alphabet edition

John Bunyan (1628-1688) was an English writer and Puritan preacher. He was a member of the Parliamentary army in the first stages of the English Civil War and later followed his father's profession of tinker. From 1661 through 1672, he was imprisoned for preaching without a license.



The Pilgrim's Progress (1678 and 1684) is his best-known work. Part One was started while he was in prison and became an immediate success upon publication. Unauthorized sequels helped motivate Bunyan to prepare his own second part several years later. The Pilgrim's Progress is the single most successful Christian book after the Bible itself. In simple and straightforward prose, Bunyan presents an allegory of his own low-church, Protestant theology. Its contributions to our cultural heritage include ideas and names such as the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, and muckraking.



This book is in the Deseret Alphabet, a phonetic alphabet for writing English developed in the mid-19th century at the University of Deseret (now the University of Utah).