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| Author: | Bunyan, John |
| Title: | The pilgrim's progress from this world to that which is to come; delivered under the similitude of a dream. By John Bunyan. With eighteen engravings |
| Cat. Number: | 0406 |
| Date: | 1832 |
| 1st Edition: | 1678 |
| Pub. Place: | London |
| Publisher: | Religious Tract Society, sold at The Depository, 56, Paternoster Row |
| Price: | Unknown |
| Pages: | 1 vol., 378pp. |
| Size: | 17 x 10 cm |
| Illustrations: | Title-page vignette and 15 full-page engravings |
| Note: |
Images of all pages of this book
The first part of Pilgrim's Progress was first published in 1678, and the second, also printed here, in 1684. Two things happened to the work in the early nineteenth century, from when the Hockliffe Collection's edition dates. First, it began to be illustrated, and the Hockliffe copy has fifteen fine engravings. Second, the book began to be published specifically for children, as this Hockliffe edition probably was. It was issued by the Religious Tract Society, which had been founded in 1799 with the aim of distributing Evangelical tracts to the poor. By 1832, however, when it published this edition of Pilgrim's Progress, the RTS had shifted its main focus to literature for children.
Of course Pilgrim's Progress had been read by children ever since its first publication. Bunyan himself boasted in 'The Author's Way or sending forth of his second part of The Pilgrim' that,
The very children that do walk the street,
If they do but my holy Pilgrim meet,
Salute him will; will wish him well, and say,
He is the only stripling of his day. (p.202)