The Pilgrim's Progress (Part I 1678/Part II 1684) holds a unique place in the history of English literature. No other seventeenth-century work except the King James Bible, nothing from the pen of a writer of Bunyan's social class in any period, and no other Christian work, has enjoyed such an extensive readership. The pilgrim Christian, Mr Worldly Wiseman, Giant Despair, Hopeful, and Ignorance are engaged in a powerful drama set against a solidly realistic background of town and country. Bunyan captures the speech of ordinary people as accurately as he depicts their behaviour and appearance and as firmly as he realizes their inner emotional and spiritual life. The tale is related in language remarkable for its beauty and simplicity, and is spiced with Bunyan's acute and satirical perceptions of the vanity and hypocrisy of his own society. The Pilgrim's Progress (Part I 1678/Part II 1684) holds a unique place in the history of English literature. No other seventeenth-century work except the King James Bible, nothing from the pen of a writer of Bunyan's social class in any period, and no other Christian work, has enjoyed such an extensive readership. The pilgrim Christian, Mr Worldly Wiseman, Giant Despair, Hopeful, and Ignorance are engaged in a powerful drama set against a solidly realistic background of town and country. Bunyan captures the speech of ordinary people as accurately as he depicts their behaviour and appearance and as firmly as he realizes their inner emotional and spiritual life. The tale is related in language remarkable for its beauty and simplicity, and is spiced with Bunyan's acute and satirical perceptions of the vanity and hypocrisy of his own society. John Bunyan was born on 28th November 1628 in Harrowden, England. John was probably educated at his father's house, possibly with other poor country boys, but in his writings he refers to his days in school so it is possible that he also spent some time at the school in Houghton Conquest. Either way, his later writings demonstrate a high degree of literacy. Like his father, he chose a job 'on the road', by adopting the trade of Tinker. This was a fairly skilled but lowly occupation. The tinker's trade was a respected one - few people could afford to purchase new pots when old ones became holed, so pots would need to be frequently mended. Unfortunately, the semi-nomadic nature of their life lead to tinkers being regarded by some in the same poor light as gypsies. During 1644–1647 John served at Newport Pagnell garrison as the civil war was nearing the end of the first stage. He was saved from death by a fellow soldier who volunteered to go into battle in his place and was killed while walking sentry duty. In 1649, when he was about 21, he moved into a cottage on Elstow High Street and in 1650 married a young woman, whose name is not known. John Bunyan had an open mind to all who had biblical faith in Jesus Christ, but was opposed to those who caused divisions over the form and time of baptism. The first recorded assertion that Bunyan was a Baptist appears to come much later, as repeated by a Dr Armitage in 1887 from an anonymous source supposedly around 1690, after John's death. In January of 1661 he was incarcerated for the crimes of pertinaciously abstaining from attending mandatory Anglican church services and preaching at unlawful meetings. It was during this time that he conceived his allegorical novel: The Pilgrim's Progress. At one time, The Pilgrim's Progress was considered the most widely read and translated book in the English language - apart from the Bible. The charm of the work, which gives it wide appeal, lies in the interest of a story in which the intense imagination of the writer makes characters, incidents, and scenes alike, live in the imagination of his readers as things actually known and remembered by themselves. Its touches of tenderness and quaint humour, as well as its bursts of heart-moving eloquence, and pure, idiomatic English, also contribute to its general appeal. As he was riding to London from Reading to resolve a disagreement between a father and a son, he caught a cold and developed a fever. He died at the house of his friend, John Strudwick, a grocer and chandler on Snow Hill in Holborn Bridge on 31 August 1688.