The Pilgrim's Progress Reading Order

The Pilgrim's Progress (Part I, 1678; Part II, 1684) by John Bunyan is the most widely read work of allegorical Christian fiction in the English language — an account of the journey of a man named Christian from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, beset by temptations (the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle, Giant Despair) and accompanied by companions with names like Faithful, Hopeful, and Worldly-Wiseman. Written while Bunyan was imprisoned for unlicensed preaching, the book works simultaneously as a dream-vision allegory in the medieval tradition (Langland's Piers Plowman, Dante's Divine Comedy), as an account of Puritan spiritual experience in the tradition of the spiritual autobiography, and as a genuinely gripping adventure narrative in which the pilgrim's progress is never guaranteed and the allegorical dangers feel emotionally real. Part II (1684) follows Christian's wife Christiana and her children on the same journey, and has generally been considered less powerful than Part I, though it introduces the character of Great-heart. The Pilgrim's Progress was the most widely owned book in English-speaking households after the Bible well into the nineteenth century, and its influence on later English-language fiction — from Thackeray (who borrowed Vanity Fair as a title) to Louisa May Alcott (who used it as a structural scaffolding for Little Women) — is immeasurable.