Bunyan, John

Author of the "Pilgrim's Progress," born in Elstow, near Bedford, the son of a tinker, and bred himself to that humble craft; he was early visited with religious convictions, and brought, after a time of resistance to them, to an earnest faith in the gospel of Christ, his witness for which to his poor neighbours led to his imprisonment, an imprisonment which extended first and last over twelve and a half years, and it was towards the close of it, and in the precincts of Bedford jail, in the spring of 1676, that he dreamed his world-famous dream; here two-thirds of it were written, the whole finished the year after, and published at the end of it; extended, it came out eventually in two parts, but it is the first part that is the Pilgrim's Progress, and ensures it the place it holds in the religious literature of the world; encouraged by the success of it—for it leapt into popularity at a bound—Bunyan wrote some sixty other books, but except this, his masterpiece, not more than two of these, "Grace Abounding" and the "Holy War," continue to be read (1628-1688).