The Pilgrim's Progress from this World to that which is to come,

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In contemporary black half calf with green marbled boards, titles and decorative tooling to black leather label to upper cover, gilt tooling, corners and edges bumped and worn. Spine, raised bands, gilt tooling, date to base, worn at joints. Internally, green marbled endpapers, frontis, titlepage withing double ruled borders, all other pages within single ruled border, (xxvii), [2], 4-90 pp, 22 illustrations (engravings in outline and woodcuts), printed by Harrison and Co. St Martins Lane, London, oblong 40*27 cm. Some light marginal water staining. (1939 Brit. Museum Cat 1871c22) One of the most popular books ever printed, The Pilgrim's Progress was composed by Bunyan partly as a distraction from 'worser thoughts', partly to allegorize his religious experience as a guide for others, and partly to add his voice to the great debate over conscience that raged especially between 1667 and 1672. Christian's experience at Vanity fair echoes Bunyan's at the hands of Restoration magistrates and judges. More broadly, Bunyan drew on his military experience to craft an epic that creatively combined warfaring and wayfaring. Christian is both pilgrim and warrior, and the message of The Pilgrim's Progress is not only a call to embrace and persist in the Christian life, but also a summons to battle the forces of evil, if necessary by refusing to yield to the state's demands for religious conformity. Most of the work was probably in hand by autumn 1669, when Bunyan enjoyed modest liberty, and the rest was probably composed by early 1671. See ODNB.