John Bunyan

John Bunyan (1628–1688) was born in Elstow, near Bedford, the son of a tinker, and served briefly in the Parliamentary army during the Civil War before returning home to take up his father's trade. He joined a nonconformist congregation in Bedford in 1653 and began preaching in 1657; after the Restoration made unlicensed preaching illegal, he was arrested in 1660 and spent some twelve years in Bedford gaol, refusing repeated offers of release in exchange for a promise to stop. He wrote Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, his own spiritual autobiography, during this imprisonment, publishing it in 1666; a second, shorter spell in gaol in 1676–77 produced The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), the allegory of Christian's journey to the Celestial City that became one of the most widely read books in the English language. He died in London in 1688.