Franklin Library leather edition of John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress," a LIMITED edition, one of the 100 GREATEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME series, Taken from 19th century text edited by Edmund Venables, Canon of Lincoln and Mabel Peacock, and made available to Franklin by the Rare Books Collection of Bryn Mawr College Library, Authorized by Clarendon Press Oxford, bound in Switzerland, published in 1976. Bound in rawhide tan leather---with an antique look---, the book has burgundy French moire silk end leaves, satin book marker, hubbed spine, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, gold gilding on three edges---in FINE condition. 22 Pages of NOTES FROM THE EDITOR is included. John Bunyan, who lived from 1628---1688, led his life against the tumultuous background of uneasy 17th century England. Raised in "utter poverty" he rose in the world by reading.  His father was a "peddler of pots" and young John rode with him around the countryside. Time and again he saw the face of Christ in a burning cloud.  Like his hero, CHRISTIAN, he felt doomed and desperate even though he "was in a flame to find the way to Heaven and glory."  In 1653, Bunyan renounced the Church of England and joined Glifford's congregation in Bedford. In 1660 the Puritan regime collapsed, and Charles II took the throne.  Under the Act of Uniformity, everyone was required to belong to the Church of England. Bunyan was advised to suspend preaching, but he refused.  He was seized while addressing a meeting in a farmhouse and brought to trial.  Unwilling to repent, he spent twelve years in the Bedford County jail. In 1672, the King granted amnesty to all religious dissenters, and Bunyan was delighted to be back with his family and friends. Bunyan's vivid allegory of man's way to salvation has been the most widely read book in the English language with the exception of the Bible. Benjamin Franklin proclaimed, "The Pilgrim's Progress to be the most influential book of his youth and Herman Melville wrote that God had granted Bunyan "the pale, poetic pearl." Bunyan's names are wonderfully descriptive: "Fair Speech," "Mr. Worldly Wiseman," "Carnal Policy," "Doubting Castle," "Mrs. Diffidence," "Great Heart," "Mr. Two Tongues," and "Mr. Smoothman." Bunyan does miss a vice or virtue. 381 pages----a SPECTACULAR volume!  I offer combined shipping.