1 - Introduction

Summary

Witness my name, if Anagram‘d to thee,

The Letters make, Nu hony in a B.

What does the name John Bunyan mean to modern men and women? When the author composed this anagram, in an afterword to a book called The Holy War, he was so well-known that his work, and fame, had already spread far beyond his native England. The publication of his most famous text, The Pilgrim's Progress, had already made him what we would call a household name across Europe and North America; soon the book would be found across every continent making it one of the international best sellers of all time. In the verse ‘Advertisement to the Reader’ that was included with the later text, Bunyan is defending himself against claims by people who felt that he had not been the author of The Pilgrim's Progress: ‘Insinuating as if I would shine/In name and fame by the worth of another, Like some made rich by robbing of their Brother’ (HW 251). He claims sole authorship of the earlier text and denies that anyone else, apart from God, had any involvement: ‘Manner and matter too was all mine own, /Nor was it unto any mortal known,/‘Till I had done it’ (HW 251). Bunyan concludes his case for the defence with his confident and playful anagram, sealing the association between John Bunyan and The Pilgrim's Progress that has lasted until today.

Now John Bunyan is a name with which many people might be familiar, through its association with the title of The Pilgrim's Progress. But there are signs that the name and title have had a different history to the writing that links them. English speakers might still refer to a topography from his allegory, wallowing in a Slough of Despond, living in one of the many streets called ‘Mount Pleasant’; the magazine Vanity Fair unwittingly recreates the market for shallow pleasures that masked a harsh, unjust world; television quiz shows regularly ask ‘Who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress?’ or ‘Can you name the famous allegory by John Bunyan?’. But when asked if they have read the book, far fewer people would say yes now than would have been the case in the nineteenth or early-twentieth centuries.