5 - The Life and Death of Mr Badman

Summary

The shining success of The Pilgrim's Progress in its own day and since, whether viewed in terms of popularity, literary, or pastoral achievement, inevitably obscures Bunyan's later works. Whether or not the second part of the allegory is regarded as a separate work or as a companion piece, the story of Christian's pilgrimage and that of his fellow travellers has a unique place globally within the history of English literature. Yet Bunyan's mission to write for an ever-wider and more diverse readership, in order to aid their own journeys to salvation, led him to explore other literary forms in works that have much to reward the attention of modern readers interested either in the period in which they were written or the history of literature. The favourable reception of The Pilgrim's Progress had a notable impact on Bunyan. Although he continued to write treatises and sermons, and to be actively involved in his own church affairs, as a later chapter will discuss in the context of a controversy over women's worship, his fame led to calls to preach ever further afield and his confidence in the effectiveness of his literary experiments grew. Bunyan would always be anxious about misinterpretation and would insist on God's sole absolute authority but his own growing assurance as an author is notable.

The Life and Death of Mr Badman, published in 1680, was presented by Bunyan as what we might in modern parlance call a ‘follow-up’, as opposed to a formal sequel. In his customary address to the reader, the author noted that as his story of the progress of ‘the Pilgrim from this World to Glory’ had proved ‘acceptable to many in this Nation’, it had ‘come into my mind to write, as then, of him that was going to Heaven, so now, of the Life and Death of the Ungodly, and of their travel from this world to Hell ’ (MB 1). He goes on to explain that he has chosen to tell this story in the form of a dialogue ‘that I might with more ease to my self, and pleasure to the Reader, perform the work’ (MB 1), and calls on the reader to examine his or her own life to see ‘whether thou thy self art treading on his path’ (MB 1).