The Pilgrim’s Progress (Oxford World’s Classics) by John Bunyan (Epub)

Description

One of the best-selling books of all time, The Pilgrim’s Progress holds a unique place in the history of English literature. Bunyan captures the speech of ordinary people as accurately as he depicts their behavior and appearance and as firmly as he realizes their inner emotional and spiritual lìe

User’s Reviews

“I like it, and my students like it. The notes will tell them what they need to know.”–Gail McGrew Eifrig, Valparaiso University

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ I love this book, it is a classic and well worth the read whether you consider yourself a “christian” or not, so when I saw this version for 99¢, including the audio narration, I was thrilled and purchased it right away. Then I started to read it, in the prologue there is a note from some priest who has taken it upon himself to pare down the book by removing all of the “sermons” that he believes slow the story down. While that is fine for some people who may prefer this pared down version, it should be advertised up front as “abridged”, which it is not. Had I known I was getting a much less meaningful version of the book, I would never have purchased it, which is why I rated it as 1 star.

⭐ The text is NOT in modern English. In a chapter captioned ‘NOTE ON THE TEXT & ILLUSTRATIONS’, the Editor, Roger Pooley explains that Bunyan’s work went through several revisions, and discusses the approach that other scholars took regarding Bunyan’s text. He states:” I have decided to base my text on the last edition published in Bunyan’s lifetime, the tenth edition of the first part, and the second edition of the second part, Both published in 1688. This has the advantage of preserving all the changes in the text and marginal notes that Bunyan may have overseen….”And:“ Should an editor modernize Bunyan’s text?…I am sympathetic to such ambitions (and suspect Bunyan would be too) but they are NOT mine in this edition… ”This book has many of the charming drawings that appeared in the work in the late 1600’s, including the ‘Sleeping Portrait’ of Bunyan by Robert White (1679)This complete edition has the scripture side notes. It has lots of notes and a list ‘For Further Reading’. This paperback ” weighs next to nothing and will ‘ go ‘ anywhere. I also highly recommend The Banner of Truth’s hardcover cloth edition ISBN 0 8515 1259 3.” I am going to my Father’s, and though with great Difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all theTrouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my Pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it . . .”

⭐ This book is “slightly abridged for the modern reader”. I wanted the full text. Ugh. Would be nice if that was in the description somewhere.

⭐ First, bear in mind that this is a somewhat simplified version of “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is not *very* simplified—you can compare it easily with the original online, and you’ll see that some archaisms both of language and syntax, and difficult vocabulary, which are rendered more gently. This is not an abridgment (at least, I don’t think it is), but it is a slight rewriting, a slightly simplified edition of the original. Here’s a brief sampling showing the difference:The original: Chr. Then said Christian to Hopeful his fellow, Is it true which this man hath said?This rewriting: Then Christian asked Hopeful, “Is this man speaking truthfully?”As you can see, it’s not unlike rendering the King James version into the Good News version. So, still worthwhile, still contains the same thoughts in the same order, but—not the original.Nevertheless, I do appreciate the rewriting. This is one of those books that might not actually be important to read in the original, just as you would not at all mind Shakespeare’s orthography etc. being made modern. It made a fairly difficult book (for our homeschooled kids) much more accessible.I was surprised that it actually held the interest of my (believe it or not) nonbelieving family. Even my five year old boy was paying attention (especially since I explained quite a bit in even simpler language) and was able to follow along. It also provides an excellent way to understand how a certain kind of old-fashioned Christians understood their religion.

⭐ I reviewed the Oxford World’s Classics print version of this book back in 2004. Alas, Amazon (or, probably, its software) not only has not connected the reviews from that paperback to the matching OWC Kindle edition, it has left them high and dry on a duplicate product page, which claims that only used copies of the in-print paperback are available.I can’t do anything about most of the dozen or so reviews left stranded there, some of them excellent (except refer you to them), but I can post a slight revision of my own treatment, concluding with some comments on how the E-book version differs from the print edition (which was the point of my original plan, before I discovered the odd discrepancy).Fortunately, neither page has (obvious) reviews of other editions in the mix — a serious problem with some other pages, where in many instances one has little idea of exactly which form of the book is being reviewed. (And there is considerable room for confusion. Both Kobo and Kindle offer sixty-some digital versions — I haven’t bothered to check NOOK or other formats, or count hardcovers and paperbacks, many out of print.)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), usually published with the First Part ever since. (There have been separate editions, some currently available in digital form.) This new set of adventures concerns the family which “Christian,” the original Pilgrim, left behind in his own journey to the Celestial City. (This being an allegory, he was represented as literally following one of Christ’s injunctions — but readers aware of Bunyan’s biography will recall that during his imprisonment he had, rather literally, “abandoned” his real family.)”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 described years ago in a separate (now somewhat buried) review of Sharrock’s very lightly modernized “popular version” for the Penguin Classics (1986, with revisions, 1987), originally in the Penguin English Library series (1965). Briefly, Sharrock restored Bunyan’s speaking (or, more exactly, perhaps, *preaching*) style to a text which had been worked over in the interest of “proper grammar,” sometimes without much regard for what Bunyan was saying in the seventeenth-century vernacular.Those serious readers or students who wanted a reliable edition, but didn’t need the full apparatus, used to have available another, closely related, edition: 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). This was replaced in 2003 with 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 seemed to be available for through Amazon when Owens’ first appeared, but Oxford, unlike Penguin, doesn’t seem to keep multiple versions of a title in print in its “Classics” line. (From time to time it may show up second-hand — possibly confused with its successor.)[Note, February 2015: Thanks in part to Amazon’s lumping together different editions, it slipped my notice that Penguin Classics released a new edition of “Pilgrim’s Progress” in 2008. This one was edited by Roger Pooley.]Since I then had copies of both the Penguin and the old World’s Classics editions, I originally hesitated over acquiring Owen’s 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.When I noticed the Kindle version of this edition, I wondered how one of the problems posed by “Pilgrim’s Progress” had been handled. The book as originally published had two sets of marginal notes, one set made up of abbreviated Biblical references identifying Bunyan’s more literal Biblical quotations and allusions, the other a set of comments on the narrative, some identifying allegorical figures, others serving as the equivalent of chapter-headings (often to very short “chapters”). These are usually presented in italics.The Penguin Classics edition maintains the second set of marginal comments, but the Biblical citations, when included, appear as back-of-the book end-notes.Owen’s OWC edition, (like Keeble’s edition before it), maintained both sets in their original positions. This arrangement is not readily compatible with Kindle single-column format (and isn’t much used in print editions these days, either). Hyperlinking them (as was done to Owen’s end-notes) was going to be an unmitigated distraction for the reader.The compromise reached was to break up the text, with the citations and comments printed below them. This is not a perfect solution — some sections run longer than a single Kindle “page” — but I find it easy to get used to. One small problem is that the comments appear in roman, not italic, type, so the reader has to be careful not to confuse them (or the captions to the illustrations) with the main body of the text.

⭐ Pilgrim’s Progress is just behind the Bible in number published and read. This is changing now with the lies of modernity. There is no need, so the modern man thinks, of a book like this. How wrong they are.First it is fun to read and understood by persons of any age. Second it is a glorious tale of journeys through peril and troubles to the Cross.Anyone reading this book will desire an invitation to see the King Jesus Christ in his brilliance greater than the sun. I am waiting with faith through Christ alone for a spot to cross the river to ultimate joy.Read this one time and you will be hooked on a most marvelous book to be read I dare you!.Cmb.

⭐ An old story of the Christian walk personified. Our hero journeys through the Christian life, getting bogged down in and overcoming the obstacles, taking wron turns, believing the wrong people, etc. But all Christians pass through the Christian life doing these same things for we face the same adversary and the same world, and live in the corrupted temple of flesh. It is not new, but it is shown in the light of day, personified in the story of one man’s Christian walk a long time ago. You will see your own spiritual battles from a different and enlightening viewpoints. It is particularly encouraging when you recognize our hero facing things at some stage of his Christian walk that we are facing today in our present Christian walk and we start making comparisons. We see Christian values such as persistence, discernment, and getting back up after falling down to rejoin the race before us. This book exposes much about the nature of humanity, God, Satan, the world and the new Christian nature from God.The language is not modern English but the picture it paints is not obscured by that. I think it adds character to the story rather than hindering it. Your mileage may vary.I believe (subject to verification) that this story is in the public domain due to its age. Some books are just better in print than on screen. The Bible for one and this for another, though your opinion may be different.

⭐ There was a time when in the English speaking world including the English colonies in North America; if one owned 2 books one would have been the Bible and the other would have been Pilgrim’s Progress. This was published for wide distribution in its time in forms affordable for many people at the time in the 1680’s and 1700’s in particular. What message did it provide to those that read it?There are notes that come with this edition but I felt it would be helpful if they were further developed as there are several references that require more background as opposed to asking a reader to pull out additional books which a reader may not have to refer to.

⭐ My 4th grade child read with an audio read along. As were the movies, this book was very engaging and heartfelt. Christian’s experiences as a believer on the narrow road to the celestial city are accurate parallels in comparison to the modern-day journey of living for Christ, surrounded by a plethora of temptations. The allegorical encounters with few encouragers, few teachers (including interpreter), and many distractions are lessons that are worth discussing among believers because they are so relevant.

⭐ This classic allegory by John Bunyan is well worth reading with the original spelling, and Scriptures in the margins. Modern editions tend to omit the Biblical citations originally written by Bunyan in the margins, by which you lose a lot of spiritual nourishment, and of course, updating the spelling never doeth any favours.A true classic, second only of course to The Holy Bible. Christian and Christiana’s journeys make you ponder the meaning of the Scriptures, and if thou hast a willing spirit, to give thy life unto the only begotten Son of God. Only by accepting Christ as Lord and Saviour canst thou be saved from eternal damnation in the fires of Hell, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’For God so loveth the world, that He hath given His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.’-The Holy Gospel Of Jesus Christ According To Seint John 3:16.

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