The Pilgrim’s Progress. With a Life of John Bunyan.

SOUTHEY, Robert. [John Bunyan].

$1,600.00

Item Number: 133036

London: John Murray and John Major, 1830.

First edition of A Pilgrim’s Progress to include Southey’s Life of Bunyan, extra-illustrated with 15 plates, 6 in color. Octavo, bound in full morocco by Bayntun-Riviere with gilt titles and elaborate gilt tooling to the spine, triple gilt ruling and decorative borders to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait of Bunyan, illustrated with two engravings by William Raymond Smith after paintings by John Martin and woodcut illustrations in text by Charles Nesbit. This copy extra-illustrated with 15 plates, 6 in color. Southey’s biography of Bunyan reinvigorated interest in his theological masterpiece in the 19th century and helped to bring The Pilgrim’s Progress to the status of high literature. Attractively printed and illustrated, this edition gained immense popularity. “Not only was this richly illustrated edition accompanied by a lengthy introduction written by poet Robert Southey, it was also the origin of commentaries written by Thomas Babington Macaulay and Sir Walter Scott and published respectively in the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review” (Collé-Bak, 94). Scott wrote of the edition that it was “adorned with a great variety of woodcuts, designed and executed with singular felicity, and with some highly finished engraving after the rich and imaginative pencil of John Martin. Thus decorated and recommended by the taste and criticism of Mr. Southey, it might seem certain that the established favourite of the common people should be well received among the upper classes” (Quarterly Review, October 1830, 494). In fine condition. A superior example.

First published in 1678, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress remains one of the most significant works of theological fiction in English literature, as well as one of the progenitors of the narrative aspect of Christian media. It has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been out of print. It appeared in Dutch in 1681, in German in 1703 and in Swedish in 1727. The first North American edition was issued in 1681. Bunyan began his work while in the Bedfordshire county prison for violations of the Conventicle Act of 1664, which prohibited the holding of religious services outside the auspices of the established Church of England.