9 - Bunyan in the World

Summary

A Book for Boys and Girls can be read as Bunyan's attempt to promote the Christian message to an ever-wider group of readers by addressing those for whom literacy is a new experience. This was a logical extension of the reach of The Pilgrim's Progress which, even in the author's lifetime, had been what would today be called an international bestseller. Although Bunyan mentioned this in the preface to the second part of the allegory, the book's success was, in his own terms, to be judged not on sales, or on critical acclaim, but on pastoral or religious impact. To Bunyan, writing was an attempt to encourage men, women, and later, children, to recognize and play their parts as sinners seeking salvation within a Christian discourse that alone created meaning in and the meaning of, their lives.

While some Christian scholars may see this as still the greatest value of his work, Bunyan's writings, like all texts, have a history that differs from their author's expectations. This final chapter cannot offer an exhaustive survey but it will indicate the diverse contexts, receptions and interpretation of Bunyan's writings from his death to the current day.

BUNYAN AT HOME

There is perhaps an irony in the title of Bunyan's A Book for Boys and Girls as a successor to The Pilgrim's Progress in his ‘literary’ rather than doctrinal writings. In the Britain of the 1960s, when I first encountered the most famous allegory of Western literature, it was as a Sunday school prize. While, as I would later discover, the work was given serious, if somewhat marginal attention, in the university-taught canon of great English literature, its popular readership in Bunyan's native land had dwindled, and its perceived appeal appeared diminished, to the point that it was a respectable award for diligent children in an also diminishing Christian tradition.

The Pilgrim's Progress had, by then, already had an illustrious history as a suitable, edifying book for children as studies of its appearance in, and influence on, classic tales of childhood attest; from Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain to Enid Blyton, influential writers for children acknowledged the impact of Bunyan's allegory as a nursery library staple.