'The son of a Methodist farm worker, he studied Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and "The Two Covenants".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book
[Permitted Sunday reading for the children of the family].
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
'The mother of Joseph Wright, the millworker-philologist, did not learn to read until age forty-eight, and then apparently never ventured beyond the New Testament, Pilgrim's Progress and a translation of Klopstock's Messiah'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: mother of Joseph Wright Print: Book
Henry Mayhew interviews a crossing sweeper:
"Sometimes, after I get home, I read a book, if I can borrow one. What do I read? Well, novels, when I can get them. What did I read last night? Well, Reynolds's Miscellany; before that I read the Pilgrim's Progress. I have read it three times over; but there's always something new in it."
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book
'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
'"I next succeeded in discovering for myself a child's book, of not less interest than even The Iliad." It was Pilgrim's Progress, with wonderful woodcut illustrations. And from there it was a sort step to Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Miller Print: Book
'When radical weaver Samuel Bamford first discovered Pilgrim's Progress, it impressed him as a thrilling illustrated romance: woodcuts of Christian's fight with Apollyon and his escape from Giant Despair encouraged "the exercise of my feeling and my imagination". Then The New Testament became "my story book and I read it all through and through, but more for the interest the marvellous passages excited, than from any religious impression which they created". At a bookshop he picked up stories about witches, Robin Hood, Jack the Giant Killer, St George and the Dragon and the History of the Seven Champions, all with the same deliciously garish woodcuts he had found in Bunyan. Since these stories followed the same narrative conventions, there was no reason to doubt them. "For my part I implicitly believed them all, and when told by my father or others that they were 'trash' or 'nonsense', and 'could not be true', I, innocently enough contrasted their probability with that of other wondrous things which I had read in books that 'it were a sin to disbelieve'."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
'Soldier's son Joseph Barker... first read the Bible "chiefly as a work of history and was very greatly delighted with many of its stories... One effect was to lead me to regard miracles as nothing improbable". Consequently his response to Pilgrim's Progress was exactly the same: "My impression was, that the whole was literal and true"...Ghost stories, highwayman stories, fairy tales, Paradise Lost and Daniel Defoe were all equally credible. "I was naturally a firm believer in all that was gravely spoken or printed", he recalled. "I doubted nothing that was found in books... I had no idea at the time I read Robinson Crusoe, that there were such things as novels, works of fiction, in existence".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
'Thomas Thompson, from a family of Lancashire weavers, grew up with tales of Robin Hood and the Black Hole of Calctta, as well as an abridged Faerie Queene and Pilgrim's Progress. So when a clergyman asked him why he read the Bible, he innocently replied "that I liked the battle scenes". That answer got him in serious trouble'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Thompson Print: Book
'When young, Frederick Rogers read not only the Bible as a thriller ("the men and women of the sacred books were as familiar to me as the men and women of Alexander Dumas"), but also Pilgrim's Progress: "There is a dark street yet in East London along which I have run with beating heart lest I should meet any of the evil things Bunyan so vividly described".'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Rogers Print: Book
'As a child, William Heaton the Yorkshire weaver-poet, "rambled with Christian from his home in the wilderness to the Celestial City; mused over his hair-breadth escapes, and his conflict with Giant Despair", enjoying it exactly as he enjoyed Roderick Random and Robinson Crusoe.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Heaton Print: Book
'"I made no distinction between Thackeray's Barry Lyndon and Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel - or between Pilgrim's Progress and Sexton Blake", recalled upholsterer's son Herbert Hodge. "All four were simply exciting stories".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Hodge Print: Book
'Elizabeth Rignall, a London painter's daughter, was not permitted to read anything else on Sundays, so she treated Pilgrim's Progress as a horror comic. Irresistibly drawn to the lurid colour illustration of the horned Apollyon, "and stretched out full length on the sofa with the book open before me I would proceed, week after week, to frighten the life out of myself".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Rignall Print: Book
'At age ten Harry West, the son of a circus escape artist, read Pilgrim's Progress merely as "A great heroic adventure". Only later did he appreciate it as a religious allegory, and still later - after his exposure to Freud and Jung - he came to "discover it as one of the greatest, most potent works on practical psychology extant".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry West Print: Book
'Emrys Daniel Hughes, son of a Welsh miner, first treated Pilgrim's Progress as an illustrated adventure story. When he was jailed during the first World War for refusing conscription, he reread it and discovered a very different book: "Lord Hategood could easily have been in the Government. I had talked with Mr Worldly Wiseman and had been in the Slough of Despond and knew all the jurymen who had been on the jury at the trial of Hopeful at Vanity Fair. And Vanity Fair would of course have been all for the War."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emrys Daniel Hughes Print: Book
I neither concealed my doubts nor my fears but communicated them freely to several persons, no one however said anything which appeared to me calculated to remove my doubts I read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and parts of other equally absurd books, but all would not do, reason was too strong for superstition and at length the fiend was completely vanquished.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book
My recollection of 'The Pilgrim's Progress' is a little clearer, as it was the impression of much physical activity and play, such as springing out at Sheila from dark corners pretending to be Apollyon
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
My companions at the breakfast-table through this summer were many of our popular English Classics. Among these may be enumerated "The Death of Abel" which I read emphatically aloud. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Pope's Homer, Cicero's Letters, Elizabeth, or the Exile of Siberia, Dr Johnson's Rasselas, with many other works of established reputation.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
'At the close of the nineteenth century, on a farm in Derbyshire Peak District, Robinson Crusoe was read aloud every winter and never palled on the audience. As Alison Uttley remembered, it was even more popular than Pilgrim's Progress: "Christian on his journey met giants and evil men, but Robinson Crusoe fought against the elements, the wind and rain, lightning and tempest, droughts and floods. He lived a life they could understand, catching the food he ate, sowing and reaping corn, making bread, taming beasts... The family shared the life of Robinson Crusoe, hoping and fearing with him, experiencing his sorrows..."'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alison Uttley Print: Book
'[J.M. Dent's] reading was marked by the autodidact's characteristic enthusiasm and spottiness. He knew Pilgrim's Progress, Milton, Cowper, Thomson's Seasons and Young's Night Thoughts; but...did not read Shakespeare seriously until he was nearly thirty'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Malaby Dent Print: Book
'[George Bernard] Shaw read the Bible all through; and he was much affected by Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Bernard Shaw Print: Book
"When she was seven ... [Frances Power Cobbe's] interest in religious subjects had been activated by hearing Bunyan read aloud to her brothers."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Power Cobbe Print: Book
"Emmeline Pankhurst (b. 1858) emphasized the value of her childhood reading in forming her guiding principles. Uncle Tom's Cabin fused with talk of bazaars, relief funds, and subscriptions in her Manchester home to awaken first an admiration for fighting spirit and heroic sacrifice, and then an appreciation of a gentler, restorative spirit ... other favourite childhood books which remained a lifelong source of inspiration ... [were]: Pilgrim's Progress and The Holy War, the Odyssey, and Carlyle's French Revolution. Her interest in politics she traced to reading the paper aloud to her father."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmeline Pankhurst Print: Book
'[Edwin] Whitlock... borrowed books from a schoolmaster and from neighbours: "Most of them would now be considered very heavy literature for a boy of fourteen or fifteen, but I didn't know that, for I had no light literature for comparison. I read most of the novels of Dickens, Scott, Lytton and Mrs Henry Wood, 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and 'The Holy War' - an illustrated guide to Biblical Palestine, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', several bound volumes of religious magazines, 'The Adventures of a Penny', and sundry similar classics". With few books competing for his attention, he could freely concentrate on his favorite reading, "A set of twelve thick volumes of Cassell's 'History of England'".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Whitlock Print: Book
'Stella Davies's father would read to his children from the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress", Walter Scott, Longfellow, Tennyson, Dickens, "The Cloister and the Hearth", and Pope's translation of the "Iliad", though not in their entirety: "Extracts suitable to our ages were read and explained and, when we younger ones had been packed off to bed, more serious and inclusive reading would begin... We younger ones often dipped into books farf beyond our understanding. It did us no harm, I believe, for we skipped a lot and took what we could from the rest".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stella Davies Print: Book
"And how fared the growth of this child's mind the while? Thanks to the care of his mother, who had sent him to the penny school, he had learnt to read, and the desire to read had been awakened. Books, however, were very scarce. The Bible and Bunyan were the principle; he committed many chapters of the former to memory, and accepted all Bunyan's allegory as bona fide history. Afterwards, he obtained access to 'Robinson Crusoe', a few old Wesleyan magazines and some battle histories. These constituted his sole reading, until he came up to London, at the age of fifteen, as an errand boy."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Massey Print: Book
'Robert Collyer grew up in a blacksmith's home with only a few books - "Pilgrim's Progress", "Robinson Crusoe", Goldsmith's histories of England and Rome - but their basic language made them easy to absorb and excellent training for a future clergyman:. "I think it was then I must have found the germ... of my lifelong instinct for the use of simple Saxon words and sentences which has been of some worth to me in the work I was finally called to do".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Collyer Print: Book
'[Howard] Spring was the son of a Cardiff gardener who bought his children secondhand copies of "Tom Jones" and "Swiss Family Robinson", and read aloud from "Pilgrim's Progress", "Robinson Crusoe" and Charles Dickens'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Spring Print: Book
'One day Maud stood in front of Grandfather's bookshelves in the parlour and made up her mind that she would read every book on them. There weren't all that many, even though Grandfather, himself, loved to read. He took a daily newspaper from Charlottetown and Grandmother had her Godey's Lady's Book magazine full of stories, poems and fashion drawings. There was the big family Bible. There was "The Pilgrim's Progress" - in those days, in every Christian household where there were books, there was a copy of Bunyan's inspirational allegory. There were other Christian books and missionary tracts, two volumes of the "History of the World", a few novels for adults, and one story for children entitled "Little Katey and Jolly Jim". Grandfather read the Bible aloud every night after supper, seated at the big table in the sitting room, and, afterwards, Maud was allowed to sit at the kitchen table with the light from the oil lamp shining on the book and read again the stories that gripped her... In time, she did read every book on Grandfather's shelves, but not during the summer she was six and a half, and she was well into her teens before she had any wish to read most of the novels or "The Pilgrim's Progress". But she spent many a blissful evening poring over the fashion drawings in the Godey's Lady's Book... The one book she read over and over was "Little Katey and Jolly Jim", because it was about children and not too full of moral lessons. She thought it was "simply scrumptious".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book
'One of my aunts, living some two miles away, I discovered had a copy of Bunyan's immortal dream. The Bible and the pilgrim. Bunyan, for some reason, probably because of the great esteem in which it was held, was hidden away in a drawer, and my aunt was disinclined to let me take the book away with me, but she gladly gave me permission to read it at her house. As my visits were few, I had to read it by snatches. Ultimately I read it all, some portions many times over, with intense delight, though I fear with no great spiritual profit.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
?The first book which attracted my particular notice was "The Pilgrim?s Progress", with rude woodcuts; it excited my curiosity in an extraordinary degree. There was "Christian knocking at the strait gate", his "fight wit Appolyn", his "passing near the lions", his "escape from Giant Dispair [sic]", his perils at "Vanity Fair", his arrival in "the land of Beula", and his final passage to "Eternal Rest": all these were matters for the exercise of my feeling and my imagination. And then when it was explained to me ? as it was by my mother and sister...?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
?Excepting "Pilgrim?s Progress", "Gulliver?s Travels" and the "Arabian Nights", I saw and read none of the books which entrance young minds. The religious meaning of the first, the satirical meaning of the second, and the doubtful meaning of the third were, of course, not understood. The story was the great thing ? the travels of Christian, the troubles of Gulliver, the adventures of Aladdin??
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Edwin Adams Print: Book
?I made very little progress in learning until the year 1794 only my mother borrowed the pilgrim?s progress and Doctor Watts hymns for me and told me the meaning of them as well as she Could which kept me from going back but I Could not advance because I had no one to teach me.?
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book
'Here I also met with some books of a higher order, but which were then far beyond any comprehension. Among these were Hervey's "Meditations", "The Pilgrim's Progress", and an illustrated Bible. This last work was crowded with engravings which were called embellishments.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'I am reading old Bunyan again after the long lapse of years, and am profoundly struck with the true genius manifested in the simple, vigorous, rhythmic style.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book
'This dream I knew not what to make of but I took some encouragement from it and the next day I was reading in pilgrims progress and was by a quotation directed to the 33 Chap of job and the 15th and 16th verses In a dream in a vision of the night when deep sleep falleth upon men in slumberings upon the bed Then he openeth the ears of men and Sealeth their instruction.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book
'in a few days after this I met with a book written by Mr Bunyan the title of the book was the two Covenants in this book the unpardonable Sin was explained this part I soon found and read it over with eagerness for I thought Mr Bunyan Could not be deceived such a man as he was but I found no satisfaction for all seemed to be against me I read it again several times over for I Could not give it up...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Mayett Print: Book
'"I had often read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress", recalled [...] William Brown, "and considered myself like the apostate in the iron cage, and drew my own conclusions".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Brown Print: Book
'Called one morning on the Rev S Hilliard & saw Bunyan's "Pitcher" and several pages of his writings in some documents there preserved.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'there was nothing in the house which was worth reading, apart from the Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress", "Gulliver's Travels", and a book by R.M. Ballantyne about Hudson Bay.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'I can say this much that your paper has impressed me very much, and I shall never get the village out of my head; I know the place; it is called (to imitate Bunyan) the village of Hope-deferred, and near it goes the river of the Shadow of Suicide.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1937) include the description of the death of Mr Badman's wife (opening 'Now, said she, I am going to rest for my sorrows, my sighs, my tears, my mournings, and complaints') from chapter 16 of John Bunyan, The Life and Death of Mr Badman.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
Passages transcribed at length into E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1937) include the description of the suicide of John Cox, from chapter 19 of John Bunyan's Life and Death of Mr Badman.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'Johnson praised John Bunyan highly. "His 'Pilgrim's Progress' has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote. There is reason to think that he had read Spenser".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'The [Tennyson] boys had one great advantage [as home-educated pupils], the run of their father's excellent library. Amongst the authors most read by them were Shakespeare, Milton, Burke, Goldsmith, Rabelais, Sir William Jones, Addison, Swift, Defoe, Cervantes, Bunyan and Buffon.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Tennyson children (boys) Print: Book
'After that Kitty made a proposition very pleasant to me, that we should sit together all the afternoon and read "Pilgrim's Progress" and work; and we sat snugly over the nursery fire, and it was interesting and pleasant to me on two accounts, as I feel interested in the Allegory of the pilgrim and it was pleasant to be so snug with Kitty who I don't like to say much about ... We then drank tea; after tea Kitty and I read a little further ... after supper I read with Kitty until bed time.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Print: Book
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 26 June 1796: 'Christian went a long way to fling off his burden in the Pilgrims Progress. I doubt only my lungs. I find my breath affected when I read aloud. but exercise may strengthen these.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Saturday, 3 July 1830:
'I read Southey's Pilgrim's Progress and think of reviewing the same [...] Read Hone's Every day Book and with a better opinion of him than I expected from his anti-religious frenzy.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
'Why the hell did you or your printers - a lousy lot whom I abominate - pass over a correction of mine and send me sprawling down to posterity as an ignoramus who thought the Ill-Favoured Ones were in the first part; when I was nine years old, I knew better than that. Christian never saw 'em; they were people who attacked women, a point really felt by Miss Bagster, God bless her old heart.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'The rest of the evening was devoted to John Bunyan. H.R. Smith read a paper dealing with the main episodes of his life. This was a valuable introduction and gave the right historical & religious setting of Bunyan. C.E. Stansfield read an Appreciation of Pilgrim's Progress & of the writing of Bunyan. He referred to Bunyan & Milton as the two writers who expressed most completely the Puritan ideal. He expected Pilgrim's Progress to live as it expressed the universal quest of mankind. There were several readings from Bunyan's works which added greatly to the interest. Mrs Smith read from 'Grace Abounding' the book which is his spiritual autobiography.
R.H. Robson read the Fight with Apollyon
C.I. Evans [ditto] The trial scene in Vanity Fair
Mrs Unwin [ditto] The Interpreter's House.
In the general discussion some doubt was expressed of C.E. Stansfield's opinion that the Pilgrim's progress will live. It was felt by some that the story will always be attractive to children, but that the puritan flavour & crude theology would prevent it becoming anything more than an interesting historical document for older people'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Smith Print: Book
'The rest of the evening was devoted to John Bunyan. H.R. Smith read a paper dealing with the main episodes of his life. This was a valuable introduction and gave the right historical & religious setting of Bunyan. C.E. Stansfield read an Appreciation of Pilgrim's Progress & of the writing of Bunyan. He referred to Bunyan & Milton as the two writers who expressed most completely the Puritan ideal. He expected Pilgrim's Progress to live as it expressed the universal quest of mankind. There were several readings from Bunyan's works which added greatly to the interest. Mrs Smith read from 'Grace Abounding' the book which is his spiritual autobiography.
R.H. Robson read the Fight with Apollyon
C.I. Evans [ditto] The trial scene in Vanity Fair
Mrs Unwin [ditto] The Interpreter's House.
In the general discussion some doubt was expressed of C.E. Stansfield's opinion that the Pilgrim's progress will live. It was felt by some that the story will always be attractive to children, but that the puritan flavour & crude theology would prevent it becoming anything more than an interesting historical document for older people'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
'The rest of the evening was devoted to John Bunyan. H.R. Smith read a paper dealing with the main episodes of his life. This was a valuable introduction and gave the right historical & religious setting of Bunyan. C.E. Stansfield read an Appreciation of Pilgrim's Progress & of the writing of Bunyan. He referred to Bunyan & Milton as the two writers who expressed most completely the Puritan ideal. He expected Pilgrim's Progress to live as it expressed the universal quest of mankind. There were several readings from Bunyan's works which added greatly to the interest. Mrs Smith read from 'Grace Abounding' the book which is his spiritual autobiography.
R.H. Robson read the Fight with Apollyon
C.I. Evans [ditto] The trial scene in Vanity Fair
Mrs Unwin [ditto] The Interpreter's House.
In the general discussion some doubt was expressed of C.E. Stansfield's opinion that the Pilgrim's progress will live. It was felt by some that the story will always be attractive to children, but that the puritan flavour & crude theology would prevent it becoming anything more than an interesting historical document for older people'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
'The rest of the evening was devoted to John Bunyan. H.R. Smith read a paper dealing with the main episodes of his life. This was a valuable introduction and gave the right historical & religious setting of Bunyan. C.E. Stansfield read an Appreciation of Pilgrim's Progress & of the writing of Bunyan. He referred to Bunyan & Milton as the two writers who expressed most completely the Puritan ideal. He expected Pilgrim's Progress to live as it expressed the universal quest of mankind. There were several readings from Bunyan's works which added greatly to the interest. Mrs Smith read from 'Grace Abounding' the book which is his spiritual autobiography.
R.H. Robson read the Fight with Apollyon
C.I. Evans [ditto] The trial scene in Vanity Fair
Mrs Unwin [ditto] The Interpreter's House.
In the general discussion some doubt was expressed of C.E. Stansfield's opinion that the Pilgrim's progress will live. It was felt by some that the story will always be attractive to children, but that the puritan flavour & crude theology would prevent it becoming anything more than an interesting historical document for older people'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ursula Unwin Print: Book
'The rest of the evening was devoted to John Bunyan. H.R. Smith read a paper dealing with the main episodes of his life. This was a valuable introduction and gave the right historical & religious setting of Bunyan. C.E. Stansfield read an Appreciation of Pilgrim's Progress & of the writing of Bunyan. He referred to Bunyan & Milton as the two writers who expressed most completely the Puritan ideal. He expected Pilgrim's Progress to live as it expressed the universal quest of mankind. There were several readings from Bunyan's works which added greatly to the interest. Mrs Smith read from 'Grace Abounding' the book which is his spiritual autobiography.
R.H. Robson read the Fight with Apollyon
C.I. Evans [ditto] The trial scene in Vanity Fair
Mrs Unwin [ditto] The Interpreter's House.
In the general discussion some doubt was expressed of C.E. Stansfield's opinion that the Pilgrim's progress will live. It was felt by some that the story will always be attractive to children, but that the puritan flavour & crude theology would prevent it becoming anything more than an interesting historical document for older people'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'"It is an hard matter," wrote John Bunyan in "The Pilgrim's Progress", "to go down into the Valley of Humiliation."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book, Unknown
'The only books he had were little nature-study notebooks, supplemented by his mother reading The Pilgrim's Progress aloud. Once she cheated by leaving out a long theological dissertation, but that made him very cross. "You spoil the whole thing" he shouted, and ran up to his bedroom.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alan Mathison Turing Print: Book
(1) 'I am reading at present, what do you think? Our own friend "Pilgrim's Progress". It is one
of those books that are usually read too early to appreciate, and perhaps don't come back to. I
am very glad however to have discovered it. The allegory of course is obvious and even
childish, but just as a romance it is unsurpassed, and also as a specimen of real English. Try a
bit of your Ruskin or Macaulay after it, and see the difference between diamonds and tinsel.'
(2) 'It is funny that we should both have the same idea about the Temple Classics. I was
almost sure they were out of print and only wrote on the off chance for the "Pilgrim's
Progress" (did I mention it? I have read it again and am awfully bucked) and then for the
"Grael".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'Mary Gaywood giving evidence at the trial for theft of her servant Eleanor Clark at the Old
Bailey, 21 October 1761: "Last Tuesday right she went away, and not coming on the Wednesday,
we missed a cream pot; I went to Westminster, where she [i.e. Eleanor Clark] lodg'd, in John's
Street, thinking she was not well; going up stairs, I saw her reading in a book; I looked to see,
and found it to be the Pilgrim's Progress, my own book."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Clark Print: Book
'The book of my boyhood was, however, the "Pilgrim's Progress", a beautiful edition of which
was given me by a paternal uncle. I used to read it from morning to night, and could not but
believe the pilgrimage to be a real one, and often wished my mother to set out, with me and
my sister, upon the journey. She endeavoured to explain that it set forth the pilgrimage
through this world to a better; but I could not understand how it could be, and longed to visit
the House Beautiful, and even to brave the lions, and the grim fangs of Apollyon. This book it
was that early awakened my imaginative powers.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Leatherland Print: Book
'Here, owing to the fact that I had not yet
discovered the depths of my Philosopher's
incompetence, and we spent three weary days,
relieved only by "The Pilgrim's Progress" which I
happened to have with me and by visits from the
village notables.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Book
