John Bunyan

John Bunyan was born in 1628 in Elstow, near Bedford, England, the son of a tinker, a mender of pots and pans, and he followed his father's trade. At sixteen he joined the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War. After his marriage he went through years of spiritual turmoil, which he later described in his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), and in 1653 he joined a nonconformist church in Bedford, where he began to preach. After King Charles II was restored in 1660, preaching without a license from the Church of England was forbidden, and Bunyan was arrested. He refused to promise to stop preaching and spent most of the next twelve years in Bedford county jail, where he wrote and made shoelaces. After his release he became pastor of the Bedford church, and he probably wrote much of The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) in prison, an allegory in which Christian journeys from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. It became one of the most widely read books in English. Bunyan died in London in 1688.

John Bunyan is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: English Puritan preacher, raised when the Puritan spirit was at its height. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)