The Pilgrim's Progress (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

John Bunyan (Author), W. R. Owens (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 18, 2003 | Series: Oxford World's Classics

The Pilgrim's Progress has inspired readers for over three centuries. It is one of the best-loved and most widely read books in English literature and is a classic of the heroic Puritan tradition and a founding text in the development of the English novel. The story of Christian, whose pilgrimage takes him through the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, and the Delectable Mountains, is full of danger and adventure. Together with his trusty companions, Faithful and Hopeful, he encounters many enemies--the foul fiend Apollyon, Judge Hategood, Giant Despair of Doubting Castle--before finally arriving at the Celestial City.
Bunyan's own experience of religious persecution informs his story, and its qualities of psychological realism, and the beauty and simplicity of his prose combine to create a book whose appeal is universal. This edition includes the illustrations that appeared with the book in Bunyan's lifetime, giving a sense of its impact on contemporary readers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Revised edition (December 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192803611
• ISBN-13: 978-0192803610
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #599,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

Review

`'This new World's Classics offering is excellent of its kind and for its purposes - easy to recommend and impossible to fault. The Introduction is lucid and engaging...Students, teachers and the general reader will find no better companion. The advanced scholar will also learn a thing or two.'' The Recorder (International John Bunyan Society magazine) spring 2004

About the Author

W. R. Owens's publications include two volumes in the Oxford edition of The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan (1994) and a co-edited collection of essays, John Bunyan and his England 1628-88 (1990). He is co-editor, with P. N. Furbank, of The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe (1988), Defoe De-Attributions(1994), and A Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe(1998). They are joint editors of The Works of Daniel Defoe (44 vols., in progress).

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Revised edition (December 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192803611
• ISBN-13: 978-0192803610
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #599,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

114 of 119 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Ian Myles Slater on: A Reliable Edition, Improved June 8, 2004

By Ian M. Slater TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

John Bunyan was an astonishing man, a working-class genius who, while producing the last great medieval-style allegories in English, helped invent the English novel, apparently without intending either. The bulk of his writings fell into the obscurity of most seventeenth century theological tractates, but a few have remained current, and "The Pilgrim's Progress" (1678) has been of outstanding importance, for a variety of reasons. It was an immediate popular success, even appearing in French and Dutch editions within a few years, and being reprinted in Puritan Boston, where Bunyan's Baptist teachings would have been unwelcome. The second (1678) and third (1679) printings contained expansions. A fraudulent "Second Part" helped motivate Bunyan to produce his own sequel (1684), published with the First Part ever since.

"The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which is to Come" is, in fact, one of the most widely read works to come out of the era of the English Civil War, Restoration, and Glorious Revolution (which Bunyan did not live quite long enough to see). The number of actual readers, in English and many other languages, certainly exceeds those of Milton, Hobbes, or Locke, possibly all of them together. It is also one of the most misunderstood. In his own time Bunyan (1628-88) was regarded as a dangerous radical; he wrote the first part of "Pilgrim's Progress" while imprisoned for defying authority by refusing to promise to give up preaching. The issue was as much political and social as religious and ecclesiastical; the post-Restoration gentry could fear, but not accept or forgive, the pretensions of a social inferior.... (In the age of panic over the "Papist Plot," Bunyan's treatment of the ramshackle "Giant Pope" as nearly harmless is striking: might it be read as an implied attack on the fear-mongering of the Anglican establishment? Perhaps not.)

In the late eighteenth century, William Blake still responded to Bunyan the religious and political Dissenter, and the theologically astute recognized him as expounding a particular doctrine, but distance in time increasingly made him seem not only pious, but even harmless. In the nineteenth century, "The Pilgrim's Progress," long seen as suitable reading for children, was available to the working class in cheap editions, with the approval of their "betters." It found a receptive readership; but it is now clear that many of those readers recognized, as George Bernard Shaw later said, that the sins and failings Bunyan attacked were mainly those of people with money and power. Or, at least, their allegorical representatives always seem to be, or behave like, landowners, merchants, and magistrates, while their victims are working men and women.

Bunyan was indeed mostly concerned with problems of salvation (by faith) and predestination (of which you can never be certain), but the allegorical universe Bunyan presents is solidly grounded in material and social reality. Each soul must seek salvation -- the message of self-help, which the proper Victorians loved. But the little community of believers, the congregation of the true faithful, carried another message for the working class -- Organize!

This Bunyan has yet to be fully digested by popular culture. There are still a multitude of complacent editions, variously inexpensive, lavish, abridged, retold, glossed theologically or linguistically, or otherwise brought into line with some perceived need, and marketed for (mainly Protestant) Christians in search of edification. (It has found many Catholic, and apparently, some Muslim readers, as well, which is another story.)

Those who need a full critical text of this famous work will consult Roger Sharrock's 1960 edition in the Oxford English Texts series, preferably in its revised printing of 1975, and probably in a library (so far as I can tell it is out of print). It was intended as a revision of a 1928 edition by J.B. Wharey, but it broke new ground in Bunyan studies, by returning to the earliest editions of the two parts whenever possible. This was extremely important in restoring the integrity of the text, for reasons I have described in a separate review of Sharrock's popular edition for the Penguin Classics (originally in the Penguin English Library)

Those who want a reliable edition for the serious reader or student, without the full apparatus, however, now have a choice of Sharrock's own very lightly modernized "popular version" for Penguin Books; N.H. Keeble's adaptation of Sharrock's Oxford text for the World's Classics series (published by Oxford University Press; reissued under the Oxford World's Classics imprint), or the present edition by W.R. Owen, which replaces it in the Oxford World's Classics line, and is likewise based on Sharrock's work.

These Oxford popular editions follow Sharrock's critical text, in fact rather more closely than Sharrock's own Penguin edition -- Owens even with some additional reversions to first edition readings, where he finds them comprehensible without emendation. They offer introductions, chronologies, notes, and glossaries directed more to the common reader or student, explaining seventeenth-century history and theology, as well as explicating Bunyan's language. All three were admirable examples of scholarly editions adapted for the ordinary reader, which is helpful, because Sharrock's main edition seems to be out of print. Keeble's edition may be available for the moment, but Oxford, unlike Penguin, doesn't seem to keep multiple versions of a title in print in its "Classics" line.

Since I have copies of both the Penguin and the old World's Classics editions, I hesitated over acquiring this new version. It offered an expansion of Keeble's chronology and notes, and a new introduction, with a bibliography consisting mainly of recent studies (from 1980 on). Definitely an improvement, although not a blockbuster. The big difference, however, is that Owens provides the only illustrations published with the text in Bunyan's lifetime, and the verse captions he provided to them. This is not only interesting; it provides some explicit statements about the text by the author, not otherwise readily available. The illustrations themselves are not impressive -- hardly in a class with those by Blake and Cruikshank, among many others of varying degrees of skill and insight. But they reflect a real, not imaginary, seventeenth-century environment, and are a worthwhile addition to the available evidence. Read more ›

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Bestseller since 1678! February 12, 2006

By James John Hollandsworth, M.D. VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I hadn't read this book in a long time, and when I first started it I thought, "Gee, I'm going to have to like it-how can I publish a negative review of the best selling books in history?" Fortunately, my fears were indeed unfounded. Pilgrim's Progress, despite its age, remains a book that makes you think, makes you laugh, makes you love God more.

The book is an allegory: it tells the imaginary story of a man named Pilgrim, from the time he realizes he is in the city of Destruction, and follows his and his companions' journeys through good times and bad to the Celestial City which he seeks. In it are many insights about life as a Christian and life outside of Christ. One of the beauties of the book is that Bunyan draws on so many different themes-fear, dark times, temptation, despair, hope, friendship, slander, greed, mercy, just to name a few-and then shows us the right & wrong way to respond to each of these through the characters and events of the book. Therefore everyone will appreciate the lessons of the book in a unique way, according to what he is experiencing in his own walk with God.

I was most impressed with the passion and singlemindedness of Christian-in the first few pages of the book, once he is convicted of his sin, he starts to run away from the city of Destruction, "but his Wife and Children perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; but the Man put his fingers in his ears, and ran on crying, "Life! Life! Eternal Life!"" How often I lack the passion to just get up early for prayer, and this man runs, desperately blocking out all else but the one great prize that he knows he must win....

The other theme that most spoke to me was that of the pilgrims' constant focus on their destination, their hope of heaven, which provided them the strength and courage to face any trial. More on the preciousness of our hope tomorrow. Read more ›

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The very complete introduction by W. R. Owens did the job for me July 3, 2008

By andris virsnieks

Format:Paperback

"No other work in English, except the Bible, has been so widely read over such a long period." When I read something like that about this other work, "Pilgrim's Progress", I was curious. I got a copy and paged through it. At first I was disappointed, because I suspected that even if I forced myself to plow through the whole book slowly I probably would not understand the reasons for its popularity. But then I read the excellent 57 page introduction. And that gave me the education about "Pilgrim's Progress" that I was looking for. W.R. Owens's analysis and explanation of John Bunyan's classic satisfied my curiosity completely.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book August 2, 2010

By Jerett Olson

Format:Paperback

I just got done reading Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Even though it was written in the 1600's, it still has great spiritual insight to our spiritual journey in Christ; the struggles, the fears, success, victories. It explains what it truly means to be a Christian, which beyond the current post-modern understanding of Christianity but back to pre-modern understanding of Christianity. Taking us back to our roots in Christianity that we have forgotten. It reminds us that being a Christian is far deeper than going to church and doing nice things, but it's about following God's Will to end of the Earth. I think every Christian should read this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Treasure!! July 29, 2011

By Linda

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a timeless and always relevant allegory about our human nature and God's provision. I highly recommend Pilgrim's Progress to all, especially those who may feel they are alone in their struggles. You are never alone. The God of all comfort, mercy, and grace is near.