The Pilgrim's Progress: From This World to That Which is to Come, Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream

xv, [1], 189, [7] pp. 8vo. Blue-green full leather, gilt titles & decorations, all edges gilt, silk moire endpapers, green beige ribbon marker bound in, color illustrations by William Blake. Includes publisher's preface and How This Book Came to Be by John T. Winterich. Religious allegory by John Bunyan, at one time second only to the Bible in popularity. It is a symbolic vision of the pilgrimage through life. The first and best-known book, published in 1678, in which the character Christian travels on the road to salvation from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, is presented as a dream. Written in homely yet dignified biblical prose, the work has some of the qualities of a folktale, and in its humor and realistic portrayals of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Faithful, Hopeful, Pliant, and Obstinate, it anticipates the 18th-century novel.