37 Facts About John Bunyan

John Bunyan was an English writer and Puritan preacher best remembered as the author of the Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, which became an influential literary model.

John Bunyan had some schooling and at the age of sixteen joined the Parliamentary Army during the first stage of the English Civil War.

John Bunyan became interested in religion after his marriage, attending first the parish church and then joining the Bedford Meeting, a nonconformist group in Bedford, and becoming a preacher.

John Bunyan died aged 59 after falling ill on a journey to London and is buried in Bunhill Fields.

John Bunyan was born in 1628 to Thomas and Margaret Bunyan at Bunyan's End in the parish of Elstow, Bedfordshire.

John Bunyan's End is about halfway between the hamlet of Harrowden and Elstow High Street.

The name John Bunyan was spelt in many ways and probably had its origins in the Norman-French name Buignon.

John Bunyan's father was a brazier or tinker who travelled around the area mending pots and pans, and his grandfather had been a chapman or small trader.

In Grace Abounding John Bunyan recorded few details of his upbringing, but he did note how he picked up the habit of swearing, suffered from nightmares, and read the popular stories of the day in cheap chap-books.

That autumn, shortly before or after his sixteenth birthday, John Bunyan enlisted in the Parliamentary army when an edict demanded 225 recruits from the town of Bedford.

John Bunyan spent nearly three years in the army, leaving in 1647 to return to Elstow and his trade as a tinker.

John Bunyan's father had remarried and had more children and Bunyan moved from Bunyan's End to a cottage in Elstow High Street.

The name of his wife and the exact date of his marriage are not known, but John Bunyan did recall that his wife, a pious young woman, brought with her into the marriage two books that she had inherited from her father: Arthur Dent's Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and Lewis Bayly's Practice of Piety.

John Bunyan recalled that, apart from these two books, the newly-weds possessed little: "not having so much household-stuff as a Dish or a Spoon betwixt us both".

One Sunday the vicar of Elstow preached a sermon against Sabbath breaking, and John Bunyan took this sermon to heart.

The women were in fact some of the founding members of the Bedford Free Church and John Bunyan, who had been attending the parish church of Elstow, was so impressed by their talk that he joined their church.

At the instigation of other members of the congregation John Bunyan began to preach, both in the church and to groups of people in the surrounding countryside.

In 1658 John Bunyan's wife died, leaving him with four young children, one of them being blind.

John Bunyan was arrested under the Conventicle Act of 1593, which made it an offence to attend a religious gathering other than at the parish church with more than five people outside their family.

The Act had been little used, and John Bunyan's arrest was probably due in part to concerns that non-conformist religious meetings, were being held as a cover for people plotting against the king.

John Bunyan, who had been held in prison since his arrest, was indicted of having "devilishly and perniciousy abstained from coming to church to hear divine service" and having held "several unlawful meetings and conventicles, to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom".

John Bunyan was sentenced to three months' imprisonment with transportation to follow if at the end of this time he did not agree to attend the parish church and desist from preaching.

John Bunyan spent his 12 years' imprisonment in Bedford County Gaol, which stood on the corner of the High Street and Silver Street.

John Bunyan's daughter Sarah was born during his imprisonment.

John Bunyan had at times the company of other preachers who had been imprisoned.

John Bunyan continued as pastor of the Bedford Meeting and traveled over Bedfordshire and adjoining counties on horseback to preach, becoming known affectionately as "Bishop Bunyan".

John Bunyan's daughter was initially suspected of poisoning him, though the coroner found he had died of natural causes.

In 1688, on his way to London, John Bunyan made a detour to Reading, Berkshire, to try and resolve a quarrel between a father and son.

Between 1656, when he published his first work, Some Gospel Truths Opened, and his death in 1688, John Bunyan published 42 titles.

The images John Bunyan uses in The Pilgrim's Progress are reflections of images from his own world: the strait gate is a version of the wicket gate at Elstow Abbey church; the Slough of Despond is a reflection of Squitch Fen, a wet and mossy area near his cottage in Harrowden; the Delectable Mountains are an image of the Chiltern Hills surrounding Bedfordshire.

In 1874, a bronze statue of John Bunyan, sculpted by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, was erected in Bedford.

John Bunyan is depicted expounding the Bible, to an invisible congregation, with a broken fetter representing his imprisonment by his left foot.

John Bunyan is best remembered for The Pilgrim's Progress, a book which gained immediate popularity.

John Bunyan's reputation was further enhanced by the evangelical revival and he became a favourite author of the Victorians.

The tercentenary of John Bunyan's birth, celebrated in 1928, elicited praise from his former adversary, the Church of England.

John Bunyan had six children, five of whom are known to have married, of whom four had children.

The best collection of Bunyan's writing is The Works of John Bunyan, edited by George Offor and published in London in three volumes between 1853 and 1855, containing 61 unique works.