Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-8cnds Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-12T00:31:39.093Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How Bunyan Became English: Missionaries, Translation, and the Discipline of English Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2013

Isabel Hofmeyr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On 31 October 1847, the John Williams, a ship of the London Missionary Society, left Gravesend for the Pacific Islands from whence it had come. Its cargo included five thousand Bibles and four thousand copies of The Pilgrim's Progress in Tahitian. Like other such mission ships, the John Williams had been funded by the pennies and shillings of Sunday school subscription and had become a huge media spectacle. It was but one of the many international propaganda exercises at which mission organizations so excelled.

This picture of The Pilgrim's Progress (1678 and 1684) at the center of an international web is an appropriate one. Written in the wake of the English Revolution, the book had rapidly been disseminated to Protestant Europe and North America. By the late 1700s, it had reached India and by the early 1800s, Africa. Yet, some one hundred years on, this avowedly international image of The Pilgrim's Progress had been turned inside out. From being a book of the world, it had become a book of England. Today, John Bunyan is remembered as a supremely English icon, and his most famous work is still studied as the progenitor of the English novel. Roger Sharrock, in his introduction to the Penguin edition of The Pilgrim's Progress, best exemplifies this pervasive trend of analysis. His introduction begins by acknowledging Bunyan's international presence, but this idea is then snapped off from the “real” Bunyan who is local, Puritan, and above all English.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2002 , pp. 84 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Horne, Silvester C., The Story of the LMS (London, 1904), p. 223Google Scholar; London Missionary Society, Fifty-Third Annual Report of the London Missionary Society (London, 1847), p. 41Google Scholar.

2 Coombes, Annie E., Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination (New Haven, Conn., 1994), pp. 161–86Google Scholar; Maughan, Steven, “‘Mighty England do Good’: The Major English Denominations and Organisations for the Support of Foreign Missions in the Nineteenth Century,” in Missionary Encounters: Sources and Issues, ed. Bickers, Robert A. and Seton, Rosemary (London, 1996), pp. 22–26Google Scholar.

3 For figures and dates on the spread of the text see n. 40.

4 This article concentrates on Bunyan in England. He was also extremely popular in Scotland, Wales, and Protestant Ireland. See Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), pp. 28–29Google Scholar. A Welsh translation had appeared in 1688, and it went on to exercise great influence on Nonconformist thinking in the region. There were even specific Welsh traditions of illustration. See, e.g., Harvey, John, The Art of Piety: The Visual Culture of Welsh Nonconformity (Cardiff, 1995), pp. 64–67Google Scholar. For other accounts of the Welsh version, see Hill, Christopher, A Tinker and a Poor Man: John Bunyan and His Church, 1628–1688 (New York, 1988), p. 374Google Scholar; Jones, R. T., “Relations between Anglicans and Dissenters: The Promotion of Piety, 1670–1730,” in A History of the Church in Wales, ed. Walker, David (Penrith, 1976), pp. 101–2Google Scholar. The first Scottish edition appeared in 1680, to be followed by others associated with particular cities (“the Edinburgh edition,” “the Glasgow edition”). The book had always been part of the national Presbyterian church. As in England, it gained further prominence through its kinship with evangelicalism, which in Scotland assumed an added importance because of the role it played in precipitating the Great Disruption of 1843. See Borough of Bedford Public Library, Catalogue of the John Bunyan Library, Frank Mott Harrison Collection (Bedford, 1938), pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Smout, T. C., A Century of the Scottish People, 1830–1950 (London, 1986), pp. 184–87Google Scholar.

5 Sharrock, Roger, “Introduction,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (London, 1987), p. 7Google Scholar.

6 Spargo, Tamsin, The Writing of John Bunyan (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 102–4Google Scholar.

7 Keeble, N. H., “‘Of Him Thousands Daily Sing and Talk’: Bunyan and His Reputation,” in John Bunyan: Conventicle and Parnassus: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Keeble, N. H. (Oxford, 1988), pp. 248–49Google Scholar; Greaves, Richard L., “Bunyan through the Centuries: Some Reflections,” English Studies 64, no. 2 (1983): 114–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Thorne, Susan, “‘The Conversion of Englishmen and the Conversion of the World Inseparable’: Missionary Imperialism and the Language of Class in Early Industrial Britain,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Cooper, Frederick and Stoler, Ann Laura (Berkeley, 1997), pp. 238–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Middlesex, 1968), pp. 34–38Google Scholar; James, Louis, English Popular Literature, 1819–1851 (New York, 1976), pp. 28, 83Google Scholar; Vincent, David, “Reading in the Working Class Home,” in Leisure in Britain, 1780–1939, ed. Walton, John K. and Walvin, James (Manchester, 1983), p. 215Google Scholar, and Literacy and Popular Culture: England, 1750–1914 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 62, 69, 179Google Scholar; Lindsay, Jack, John Bunyan: Maker of Myths (London, 1937) p. 247Google Scholar.

10 Thompson, , The Making, pp. 34, 37Google Scholar.

11 Keeble, , “Of Him Thousands Daily Sing,” pp. 248–51Google Scholar; Greaves, , “Bunyan through the Centuries,” p. 115Google Scholar.

12 Bebbington, D. W., Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London, 1989), pp. 2–4Google Scholar.

13 Owens, W. R., “Introduction,” in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, by Bunyan, John (London, 1987), p. xxiiiGoogle Scholar.

14 J.H.W., , “Introductory Notice,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (Edinburgh, n.d.), pp. x–xiGoogle Scholar. For further evidence of how Bunyan's language saturated lower-class Protestant speech, see the University of London, SOAS, Candidates' Papers of the London Missionary Society in the Church World Mission Papers. These papers were filled out by aspirant missionaries and required them to write about their religious trajectories and experiences. See particularly John Mackenzie, box 11/6, 539, 1858; R. C. Mather, box 11/20, 299, 1833; W. Milne, box 11/39, 133, 1812; J. H. Parker, box 12/42, 460, 1843; W. D. Osborne, box 12/34, 989, 1893.

15 Quotations from Brown, John, “Introduction,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (London, 1887), pp. ix–xGoogle Scholar; “Editorial,” The Bookman 75, no. 446 (1928): 103Google Scholar; A Pilgrim, , Some Daily Thoughts on “The Pilgrim's Progress” (London, 1917), p. 10Google Scholar.

16 McGown, G. W. T., Ten Bunyan Talks (Paisley, 1906), p. 209Google Scholar; The Bookman 75, no. 446 (1928): 99Google Scholar.

17 Mason, Keeble, “Of Him Thousands Daily Sing,” p. 253Google Scholar; W., , “Preface,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (London, 1790), p. viGoogle Scholar; Stevenson, Robert, Expositions of “The Pilgrim's Progress” with Illustrative Quotations from Bunyan's Minor Works (London, 1912), p. ixGoogle Scholar; Cooper, Lina Orman, John Bunyan: The Glorious Dreamer (London, n.d.), p. 5Google Scholar; “John Bunyan Today,” The Bookman, 73, no. 435 (1927): 151Google Scholar.

18 Blatchford, Robert, My Favourite Books (London, 1900), pp. 191–92Google Scholar; Troup, Winifred, “Preface,” in Dramatic Illustrations of Passages from the Second Part of “The Pilgrim's Progress,” by Mrs.MacDonald, George (Oxford, 1925)Google Scholar.

19 Burbidge, John, Half-Hours with Bunyan's “Pilgrim's Progress” (Liverpool, 1856)Google Scholar; A Pilgrim, Some Daily Thoughts.

20 These items can be seen in the Bunyan Museum at the Bunyan Meeting House, Mill Street, Bedford, England.

21 See Borough of Bedford Public Library, Catalogue of Bedford Public Library, Miscellaneous Section, p. 39; “Preface,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (Glasgow, 1870), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

22 The Bunyan Collection in the Bedford Library contains texts with family inscriptions over several generations.

23 “Devotion to Progress,” Period Garden (December 1993), pp. 86–91Google Scholar.

24 J.H.W., , “Introductory Notice,” p. ixGoogle Scholar; McGown, , Ten Bunyan Talks, p. 2Google Scholar.

25 National Sunday School Union, Bunyan: The Dreamer—a Cantata for Young People (London, n.d.)Google Scholar; Burbidge, “Preface,” in his Half-Hours; Davies, W. H., The Sunday Scholars' Service of Sacred Song, Illustrative of “The Pilgrim's Progress” (London, n.d.)Google Scholar; Punshon, W. Morley, Lectures (London, 1882)—Google Scholarthe lectures were accompanied by magic lantern slides.

26 Phrase from McLeod, Hugh, Religion and Society in England, 1850–1914 (New York, 1996), p. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Vincent, , Literacy, p. 89Google Scholar; see the note to Sunday school teachers in RTS edition of Bunyan, J. Tilling, ed., The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (London, n.d.)Google Scholar. This is item 22649 in Catalogue of the John Bunyan Library. For prizes, see certificate pasted in.

28 Vincent, , Literacy, pp. 174–75Google Scholar.

29 MacDonald, Dramatic Illustrations; Mrs. Duncan Pearce, Christiana and Her Children: Being Scenes and Vision from the Pilgrim's Progress (n.p., n.d.), Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, item 22212; Hawker, George, “Funeral Address for Emily Margaret Lewis” (1923)Google Scholar, papers of the Camden Road Baptist Church, London.

30 Rivers, Isabel, “John Wesley and the Language of Scripture, Reason and Experience,” Prose Studies 4, no. 3 (1981): 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Baptist publications included those put out by the Baptist Tract and Book Society, such as Williams, Charles, A Bi-centenary Memorial of John Bunyan Who Died A.D. 1688 (London, n.d.)Google Scholar; and editions of Bunyan by prominent Baptists like Brown, Charles, The Wonderful Journey: Talks with Young People on “The Pilgrim's Progress” (London, n.d.)Google Scholar. One Baptist suggested that a suitable Baptist coat of arms should comprise Jesus, Carey (a missionary), and Bunyan; see Missionary Herald (July 1928), p. 195Google Scholar.

32 “The Bogey-Man,” Bedfordshire Magazine 4, no. 28 (1954): 139Google Scholar; Harper, Charles G., The Bunyan Country: Landmarks of “The Pilgrim's Progress” (London, 1928), pp. 236, 238Google Scholar. On arguments regarding the “correct” site for celebrations, see Bedfordshire Standard (29 June 1928), in Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, Newspaper Cuttings Book.

33 Tibbutt, H. G., Bunyan Meeting Bedford, 1650–1950 (Bedford, n.d.), p. 78Google Scholar; Brown, John, “Preface,” in his John Bunyan (1885; London, 1900)Google Scholar; Hargreaves, Cyril and Greenshields, M., “Preface,” in Catalogue of the Bunyan Meeting Library and Museum, Bedford (Bedford, 1955), p. 38Google Scholar.

34 The phrase is from Poynter, R. H., Syllabus of Illustrated Bunyan Lectures (Bedford, n.d.)Google Scholar, Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, box 8. Evidence on the document suggests that these lectures were given during the 1880s. See also Brown, John, Bunyan's Home (London, n.d.)Google Scholar.

35 Thompson, John and Robjohns, Sidney, Bunyan's Country (Bedford, 1900)Google Scholar; Foster, Albert J., Bunyan's Country: Studies in the Bedfordshire Topography of “The Pilgrim's Progress” (London, 1901)Google Scholar; Brown, Bunyan's Home; Cockett, C. Bernard, John Bunyan's England: A Tour with a Camera in the Footsteps of the Immortal Dreamer (London, 1928)Google Scholar.

36 Piggin, Stuart, Making Evangelical Missionaries, 1789–1858: The Social Background, Motives and Training of British Protestant Missionaries to India (London, 1984), p. 157Google Scholar; Peel, J. D. Y., “‘For Who Hath Despised the Day of Small Things’: Missionary Narratives and Historical Anthropology,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, no. 3 (1995): 595CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maughan, , “Mighty England,” p. 20Google Scholar.

37 For details of these figures see below and n. 40.

38 Hewitt, Gordon, Let the People Read: A Short History of the United Society for Christian Literature (London, 1949), p. 17Google Scholar.

39 Quoted in Venables, Edmund, Life of John Bunyan (London, 1888), p. 179Google Scholar.

40 These figures have been compiled from a range of sources. The most comprehensive source is Hurry, Patricia and Cirket, Alan, Bunyan Meeting Museum Library Catalogue (Bedford, 1995)Google Scholar. The SOAS, University of London, has a good collection of translated editions, while the Bunyan Collection in the Bedford Library has a few translations. The papers of the Religious Tract Society (housed at SOAS) have a fair amount of information, while the British Museum catalog lists some translations. See also Tibbutt, H. G., Bunyan's Standing Today (Elstow, 1966)Google Scholar; Fletcher, Irene M., “The Pilgrim's Progress and the London Missionary Society,” Bedfordshire Magazine 10, no. 77 (1966): 194–96Google Scholar; “The Pilgrim's Progress,” Sunday at Home (1907), pp. 130–31Google Scholar, Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, box 4, Pamphlets and Newspaper Cuttings; Nishimura, Kazuko, “John Bunyan's Reception in Japan,” Bunyan Studies 1, no. 2 (1989): 49–62Google Scholar. These figures must however be viewed as provisional. Records are often partial and incomplete. Also it is at times difficult to decide what a language is, particularly in the context of nineteenth-century mission work, where missionaries, desperate to evangelize, turned dialects into languages and vice versa.

41 Porter, A. N., ed., Atlas of British Overseas Expansion (London, 1991), pp. 124–37Google Scholar; Pettifer, Julian and Bradley, Richard, Missionaries (London, 1990), chaps. 4, 9, 10Google Scholar.

42 The societies involved were as follows. In the United States: American Board for the Committee of Foreign Missions, Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and Methodist Episcopal Congo Mission. In the United Kingdom: Africa Inland Mission, Baptist Missionary Society, Congo Balolo Mission, Church of Scotland Mission, Christian Missions in Many Lands, Church Missionary Society (this was an evangelical Anglican society that undertook several translations out of an evangelical rather than an Anglican impulse), Garenganze Evangelical Mission, Glasgow Mission Society, Heart of Africa Mission, London Missionary Society, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Sudan Interior Mission, Sudan United Mission, United Free Church of Scotland Foreign Mission Committee, University Mission to Central Africa, United Methodist Church Mission, and Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. In Europe: Basel Mission Society, Bremen Mission Society, Finnish Mission Society, Lutheran Fraternal Mission, Paris Evangelical Mission Society, Swiss Mission Romand, and Swedish Mission. In South Africa: Dutch Reformed Mission and South African General Mission.

43 Moorhouse, Geoffrey, The Missionaries (London, 1973), p. 273Google Scholar; Porter, , ed., Atlas, p. 136Google Scholar.

44 Hewitt, Gordon, The Problems of Success: A Short History of the CMS, 1910–42, (London, 1971), 1:xivGoogle Scholar.

45 Figures drawn from sources outlined in n. 40.

46 Precise information on colonial school syllabuses is hard to locate. For southern African information, see syllabuses and examination papers lodged at the University of South Africa, Pretoria, Joint Matriculation Board Archive; for Africa-wide information pertaining to the 1920s to 1940s, see the journal Books for Africa as well as the papers of ICCLA, housed at SOAS, University of London. The influence of Bunyan can be seen in the range of African writers who engaged with his text. These include D. O. Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola, Thomas Mofolo, Simeon Mwase, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

47 Unlike Anglophone areas, there seems to be little trace of Bunyan at the level of national literature in French, which, during the colonial period, was largely dominated by reworkings of oral narrative, témoignage, and elements of négritude. Kadima-Nzuji, Mukala, La littérature Zaïroise de langue française (Paris, 1984)Google Scholar, and “Les Périodes de la Littérature Zaïroise de langue française,” Matatu, no. 13–14 (1995): 11Google Scholar; Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen, “‘Le Congo Beige s'ouvre à la littérature’: Impact et contexte historique des concours litteraires de La voix du Congolais en 1940–1951,” Matatu, no. 13–14 (1995): 203Google Scholar.

48 Landau, Paul, The Realm of the Word: Language, Gender and Christianity in Southern Africa (Portsmouth, 1995), pp. 131–59Google Scholar.

49 Lewis, Thomas, These Seventy Years: An Autobiography (London, n.d.), p. 168 (choir service)Google Scholar; R. L. Jennings, Sermon, in Jennings's papers, University of Oxford, Regent's Park College, Baptist Missionary Society Archive, A 38; Missionary Herald (December 1931), p. 281Google Scholar (pageant); Sub-committee of the Uganda Diocesan Literature Committee (15 February 1954) mentions that a poem in The Pilgrim's Progress (“He who would valiant be”) had been a Luganda hymn for some time, University of London, SOAS, ICCLA papers, S39/36; for serialization, see Mboli ya Tengai, February–July (1925), Baptist Missionary Society Archive; for use of wall charts, see Regions Beyond, a journal of the Regions Beyond Mission Union (1928?), p. 89, University of Edinburgh, Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World; for advertisements for wall charts and postcards see RTS, One-Hundred-and-Thirty-Second Annual Report (London, 1931), pp. 50 and 54Google Scholar; for plays see The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society, no. 37 (1929): 252Google Scholar; and for magic lantern displays see RTS, Seed Time and Harvest (December 1919), p. 2Google Scholar; Zambesi Industrial Mission (July 1894), p. 7Google Scholar. Thanks to Terry Barringer for the latter reference. For six-page tract, see Lingala version, Njela na Mokristu (Bambi Wamba, n.d.); for a complete version, see Xhosa version translated by Soga, Tiyo and Soga, J. Henderson, Uhambo Lo Mhambi, pts. 1–2 (1868; Lovedale and London, 1929)Google Scholar.

50 One such case would be Kongo narrative traditions. See Janzen, John M. and MacGaffey, Wyatt, An Anthology of Kongo Religion: Primary Texts from Lower Zaire, University of Kansas Publications in Anthropology no. 5 (Lawrence, Kans., 1974), pp. 102–66Google Scholar; Struyf, Ivo, Uit den Kunstschat der Bakongos, vol. 1 (Amsterdam, 1902), pp. 158–64Google Scholar.

51 Fagunwa, D. O., The Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga, trans. Soyinka, Wole (1938; reprint, London, 1968)Google Scholar, and Expedition to the Mount of Thought (The Third Saga), trans. Adeniyi, Dapo (1954; reprint, Ile-Ife, 1994)Google Scholar; Tutuola, Amos, The Wild Hunter in the Bush of Ghosts (Washington, D.C., 1989)Google Scholar.

52 Bunyan's “The Pilgrim's Progress” in Modern English, ed. Morrison, John (London, 1896), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

53 Gupta, M. G., Mystic Symbolism in Ramayan, Mahabharat and “The Pilgrim's Progress” (Agra, 1993), pp. 152, 166Google Scholar.

54 Molema, Leloba Sefetogi, The Image of Christianity in Sesotho Literature: Thomas Mofolo and His Contemporaries (Hamburg, 1984), p. xiGoogle Scholar; Peel, , “For Who Has Despised the Day of Small Things,” p. 600Google Scholar.

55 See translated extract from the Eastern Cape newspaper Isigidimi quoted in Jordan, A. C., Towards an African Literature: The Emergence of Literary Form in Xhosa (Berkeley, 1973), pp. 92–93Google Scholar; Gaoler, , “The Pilgrim's Progress,” Inkundla ya Bantu (26 May 1942)Google Scholar.

56 Mofolo, Thomas, Moeti wa Bothjabela (Morija, 1983)Google Scholar. This edition uses a different orthography from the original.

57 Venter, Frans, Swart Pelgrim (Cape Town, 1952)Google Scholar; Gaoler, “The Pilgrim's Progress.”

58 Minutes of the Congo Mission Conference, 1909, pp. 98, 101, University of Oxford, Regent's Park College, Baptist Missionary Society Archive.

59 For evidence of this claim, see the section that follows.

60 The phrase “estranging sea” is from an article on Bunyan by Birrell, Augustine, “Links of Empire—Books (IX): The Pilgrim's Progress,” Empire Review 47, no. 235 (1928): 79Google Scholar; Maughan, , “Mighty England,” p. 28Google Scholar.

61 Missionary Herald (1 August 1888), p. 318Google Scholar.

62 Coombes, , Reinventing Africa, p. 162Google Scholar; Maughan, , “Mighty England,” p. 15Google Scholar; Pettifer, and Bradley, , Missionaries, p. 20Google Scholar.

63 Hutton, Lewis, These Seventy Years, pp. 184–85Google Scholar, sec. quoted in W.H., , John Bunyan (London, 1928), p. 221Google Scholar.

64 Sutton-Smith, H., Yakusu: The Very Heart of Africa (London, n.d.), p. 242Google Scholar; Lewis, , These Seventy Years, pp. 184–85Google Scholar.

65 Hawker, George, An English Woman's Twenty-Five Years in Tropical Africa (London, n.d.), p. 270Google Scholar; “Henry Ross Phillips,” Missionary Herald (February 1939), p. 31Google Scholar; Obituary of Stapleton, W. H., Missionary Herald (January 1907), University of OxfordGoogle Scholar, Regent's Park College, Baptist Missionary Society Archive, Stapleton, A 35.

66 “Report from Old Calabar,” Missionary Record of the United Presbyterian Church (June 1868), p. 120Google Scholar; Sutton-Smith, , Yakusu, p. 216Google Scholar; Congo Mission News (January 1929), p. 19Google Scholar; “The Pilgrim's Progress in a Congo Setting,” Missionary Herald (June 1923), p. 154Google Scholar.

67 Regions Beyond (1928?), p. 89Google Scholar, University of Edinburgh, Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World; Missionary Herald (December 1931), p. 281Google Scholar.

68 See, e.g., RTS, “The Pilgrim's Progress: List of 116 Languages and Dialects,” in One-Hundred-and-Sixteenth Annual Report (London, 1915), p. 170Google Scholar. These tables continued into the 1940s.

69 Green, Samuel G., The Story of the RTS for 100 Years (London, 1899), p. 172Google Scholar.

70 Missionary Herald (July 1905), p. 167Google Scholar.

71 Greatheart of the Border: A Life of John Brownlee Pioneer Missionary of South Africa (King Williamstown, n.d.); Obituary of Scrivener, A. E., “Greatheart of the Congo,” University of OxfordGoogle Scholar, Regent's Park College, Baptist Missionary Society Archive, papers of A. E. Scrivener, CP 67; “The Interpreters on the King's High Way,” Missionary Herald (May 1924), p. 107Google Scholar.

72 Green, , The Story, p. 63Google Scholar; Hewitt, , Let the People Read (London, 1949), p. 44Google Scholar.

73 Coombes, , Reinventing Africa, pp. 161–86Google Scholar.

74 Seed Time and Harvest (September 1909), pp. 6, 44, 46Google Scholar; Baptist Missionary Society, Congo Jubilee Exhibition: Handbook and Guide (n.p., 1928), p. 46Google Scholar.

75 “The Congo in Bristol,” Missionary Herald (November 1928), p. 264Google Scholar.

76 Seed Time and Harvest (September 1909), p. 6Google Scholar.

77 Martin, W. Stanley and Catt, David, Pictures and Portraits from “The Pilgrim's Progress” (London, n.d.), p. 54Google Scholar; Seed Time and Harvest (September 1909), p. 6Google Scholar; “The Pilgrim's Progress,” Sunday at Home (1907)Google Scholar, Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, box 4, Pamphlets and Newspaper Cuttings.

78 Christian Literature Society for India and Africa, Seventieth Annual Report (London, 1928)Google Scholar, back cover.

79 Punshon, W. Morley, Lectures (London, 1882), p. 69Google Scholar.

80 See also Offor, George, “Introduction,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (London, 1847), p. cxlviGoogle Scholar; Birrell, C. M., “Bunyan's Personal Pilgrimage,” in The Book of the Bunyan Festival: A Complete Record of the Proceedings at the Unveiling of the Statue, ed. Wylie, W. H. (London, 1874), p. 108Google Scholar; RTS, Forty-Seventh Annual Report (London, 1846), p. 37Google Scholar.

81 Incwadi ka Bunyane (Pietermaritzburg, 1926)Google Scholar; Msafiri (London, 1888)Google Scholar; Haj-oirku-Eh (Gharko) (Cairo, n.d.).

82 Hutton, , John Bunyan, p. 222Google Scholar.

83 For discussions of evangelicalism and tracts, see Cutt, Margaret Nancy, Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Writing for Children (Wormley, 1979)Google Scholar. The annual reports of the RTS also provide extensive discussions of tracts and their effects, as do the various histories of the RTS. See Green, The Story; Hewitt, Let the People Read.

84 Hewitt, , Let the People Read, p. 19Google Scholar.

85 Cutt, , Ministering Angels, p. 9Google Scholar.

86 Phrases from subtitle of United Society for Christian Literature, One-Hundred-and-Forty-Ninth Annual Report (London, 1948)Google Scholar; Mair, J. H., Books in Their Hand: A Short History of the United Society for Christian Literature (London, 1960), p. 8Google Scholar.

87 Birrell, Augustine, “John Bunyan Today,” The Bookman 73, no. 435 (1927): 151Google Scholar.

88 Brown, Bunyan's Home (this book has no pagination); Green, , The Story, p. 172Google Scholar.

89 City Land Committee of the Corporation, History of the Bunhill Fields Burial Grounds: With Some of the Principle Inscriptions (London, 1902), p. 36Google Scholar; Light, Alfred W., Bunhill Fields (London, 1915)Google Scholar. For an early attempt to erect a monument on his tomb, see Works of the Puritan Divines (London, 1845)Google Scholar, frontispiece. Frequent wreath laying at the tomb also took place: see Daily Chronicle (1 September 1899), in British Library, Bunyan Scrapbook, collected and arranged by G. Potter; “John Bunyan Restoration of Tomb,” unmarked cutting in Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, Newspaper Cuttings; and Bedfordshire Record (10 October 1928), Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, Newspaper Cuttings Book. See also Hargreaves and Greenshields, “Preface.”

90 “John Bunyan: Restoration of Tomb,” unmarked cutting in Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, Newspaper Cuttings.

91 Cockett, Offor, “Introduction,” pp. xi, xivGoogle Scholar; Brown, , “Introduction,” pp. xiiGoogle Scholar; Punshon, , Lectures, pp. 69, 110Google Scholar; Bernard, C., “John Bunyan—the Man,” Literary Review 1, no. 2 (1928): 39Google Scholar.

92 Punshon, Lectures; Martin and Catt, Pictures and Portraits.

93 Coombes, , Reinventing Africa, pp. 162–65Google Scholar.

94 Information on George Offor drawn from Offor, Richard, “The Offor Bunyan Books at Elstow,” Library Association Record 62, no. 4 (1960): 117Google Scholar; and from the Dictionary of National Biography, 1st ed., s.v. “Offor, George.”

95 Offor, George, “Memoir of John Bunyan,” in The Works of John Bunyan with an Introduction to Each Treatise, Notes, and a Sketch of his Life, Times and Contemporaries, ed. Offor, George (1854; reprint, Edinburgh, 1991), 1:xxvGoogle Scholar.

96 Southey, Robert, “The Pilgrim's Progress” (with a Life of John Bunyan) (London, 1830)Google Scholar; Offor, George, “Advertisement,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (London, 1847), p. vGoogle Scholar, and “Memoir,” p. iv.

97 Offor, , “Introduction,” p. cxliiiGoogle Scholar.

98 Ibid., pp. xi, xiv.

99 Ibid., p. cxlvi.

100 Information on Brown drawn from a biography by his daughter, Keynes, Florence Ada, Gathering Up the Threads: A Study in Family Biography (Cambridge, 1950)Google Scholar; Tibbutt, , Bunyan Meeting, pp. 71–79Google Scholar.

101 Brown mentions this fact in the introduction to the third edition of the Bunyan biography, “Preface to the Third Edition,” in his John Bunyan, 3rd ed. (1885; reprint, London, 1900)Google Scholar.

102 Brown wrote a book entitled The Colonial Missions of Congregationalism: The Story of 70 Years (London, 1908)Google Scholar. For more on Brown's mission involvement, see Parsons, Neil, King Khama, Emperor Joe and the Great White Queen: Victorian Britain through African Eyes (Chicago, 1998), p. 153Google Scholar.

103 Williams, D., Holiday at Bedford, the Town of Bunyan (London, 1910), p. 6Google Scholar.

104 Brown, John Bunyan, chap. 19, app. II.

105 Greaves, “Bunyan through the Centuries”; Keeble, “Of Him Thousands Daily Sing.” Lindsay, John Bunyan, goes against this orthodox periodization. He suggests that Bunyan's mainstream acceptance comes much later (1880s) and is forced out of the establishment by a sharpening of “the class-struggle” and a secularization of “proletarian forces.” Against this background, Bunyan is seen as a text that can “pacify” and re-Christianize the working classes (p. 249).

106 Keeble, , “Of Him Thousands Daily Sing,” pp. 254–55Google Scholar.

107 Samuel, Raphael, Island Stories (London, 1998), pp. 281–82Google Scholar.

108 Froude, James Anthony, Bunyan (London, 1880)Google Scholar.

109 Rutherford, Mark [White, William Hale], John Bunyan (London, n.d.), pp. 234–35Google Scholar; Lindsay, , John Bunyan, p. 249Google Scholar.

110 The monument unveiling is described in Wylie, ed., Book of the Bunyan Festival. For the Westminster Abbey window, see The Times (26 January 1912).

111 Williams, , A Bi-centenary Memorial, p. 96Google Scholar.

112 Daily Chronicle (25 November 1908), British Library, Bunyan Scrapbook.

113 Ibid.

114 Bishop of Durham, “The Tercentenary of John Bunyan,” Review of the Churches 5, no. 3 (1928): 315Google Scholar.

115 These themes recur throughout most of the speeches given at the event both in Bedford and London. See cuttings in Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, Newspaper Cuttings Book. For Englishness, see particularly Bedfordshire Standard (16 December 1927), (25 May 1928), (1 June 1928), (8 June 1928), and (29 June 1928); Bedfordshire Record (25 May 1928), (26 June 1928). For Bunyan as a worldwide writer see Cockett, , “John Bunyan—the Man,” p. 39Google Scholar; Spargo, , The Writing, p. 9Google Scholar.

116 The Christian World Pulpit 114, no. 2979 (1928), Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, box 4, Pamphlets and Newspaper Cuttings.

117 Keeble, , “Of Him Thousands Daily Sing,” p. 257Google Scholar.

118 Doyle, Brian, English and Englishness (London, 1989)Google Scholar; Court, Franklin, Institutionalizing English Literature: The Culture and Politics of English Study (Stanford, Calif., 1992)Google Scholar; Palmer, D. J., The Rise of English Studies: An Account of the Study of English Language and Literature from Its Origins to the Making of the Oxford English School (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Baldick, Chris, The Social Mission of English Criticism, 1848–1932 (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar.

119 Palmer, , The Rise, pp. 15–28Google Scholar; Baldick, , The Social Mission, pp. 67–70Google Scholar.

120 Viswanathan, Gauri, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (New York, 1989)Google Scholar.

121 Eagleton, Terry, Literary Theory: An Introduction (London, 1995), pp. 28–29Google Scholar.

122 Quoted in Baldick, , The Social Mission, p. 70Google Scholar.

123 Ibid., p. 82.

124 See, e.g., Saintsbury, George, A Short History of English Literature (London, 1907), pp. 513–17Google Scholar; Dobson, Austin, A Handbook of English Literature (London, 1897), pp. 95–96Google Scholar; Gosse, Edmund, English Literature: An Illustrated Record: From Milton to Johnson (London, 1906), 3:133–37Google Scholar; Albert, E., A History of English Literature: A Practical Textbook for Senior Classes (London, 1923), pp. 180–81Google Scholar.

125 Court, , Institutionalizing English Literature, p. 144Google Scholar.

126 Baldick, , The Social Mission, pp. 112–13, 151–58Google Scholar.

127 Phrase from Eagleton, Literary Theory, p. 29.

128 Quoted in Baldick, , The Social Mission, p. 87Google Scholar.

129 Ibid., p. 95.

130 Letter from Newbolt to his wife, 21 February 1921, in The Later Life and Letters of Sir Henry Newbolt, ed. Newbolt, Margaret (London, 1942), p. 278Google Scholar.

131 See, e.g., the English Association, A Short List of Books on English Literature from the Beginning to 1932 for the Use of Teachers, leaflet no. 3, p. 6, John Bunyan, pamphlet no. 19 (this pamphlet is a reissue of Firth's 1898 introduction to The Pilgrim's Progress), English Literature in Schools, pamphlet no. 21, p. 4, English Papers and Examinations for Pupils of School Age in England and Wales, pamphlet no. 37, p. 30. These pamphlets have no date or place of publication.

132 These critics include C. H. Firth, J. W. Mackail, Arthur Ransome, Arthur Mee, Sidney Lee, and G. M. Trevelyan. The work of the first four critics is cited elsewhere. See also the appropriate work of the latter two: Lee, Sidney, “Introduction,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan (London, 1905)Google Scholar; Trevelyan, G. M., English Social History: A Survey of Six Centuries, Chaucer to Queen Victoria (London, 1961), pp. 234–36Google Scholar.

133 Offor, , “Introduction,” p. cxlGoogle Scholar, discusses details of this particular change.

134 Stanley, Southey, Pilgrim's Progress, p. lxxxviiiGoogle Scholar. For later use of these phrases, see A.P., , “The Character of John Bunyan: Local, Ecclesiastical, Universal,” in Wylie, , ed., Book of the Bunyan Festival, p. 54Google Scholar; Bishop of Durham, “An Anglican's Reflection on Bunyan's Career,” Review of the Churches 5, no. 3 (1928): 323Google Scholar.

135 Bishop of Durham, “An Anglican's Reflection,” p. 324Google Scholar.

136 Phrases from “Mrs. John Brown” at a speech at Bunyan's grave, “John Bunyan: Restoration of his Tomb,” Bunyan Collection, Bedford Library, unmarked cutting in Newspaper Cuttings; Bishop of Durham, “An Anglican's Reflection,” p. 315Google Scholar; Electric and International Telegraph Company, “John Bunyan,” Our Magazine, unmarked cutting, Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, item 22552.

137 Kingsley, Charles, “Introduction,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (London, 1860), p. ixGoogle Scholar. For further examples, see Venables, Edmund, “Introduction,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (London, 1903), p. xxxviGoogle Scholar; Mee, Arthur, The Children's John Bunyan (London, n.d.), p. 25Google Scholar.

138 Firth, C. H., “Introduction,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (London, 1908), p. xlviiGoogle Scholar.

139 Cockett, John Bunyan's England; Thompson and Robjohns, Bunyan's Country; Foster, Bunyan's Country; Poynter, Syllabus.

140 A good sequence of illustrations is in Harrison, Frank Mott, “Some Illustrators of The Pilgrim's Progress (Part One) John Bunyan,” The Library, 4th ser., 3, no. 7 (1936): 243–44Google Scholar, see also the illustrations facing pp. 246, 250, 252, 254, 256, and 260. On the southern counties as templates of Englishness, see Howkins, Alan, “The Discovery of Rural England,” in Englishness: Politics and Culture, 1880–1920, ed. Colls, Robert and Dodds, Philip (London, 1986), p. 62Google Scholar.

141 Firth, , “Introduction,” p. xlviiiGoogle Scholar.

142 Mee, , The Children's John Bunyan, pp. 22, 25Google Scholar.

143 Ransome, Venables, “Introduction,” pp. xxxiv–viGoogle Scholar; Lee, “Introduction”; Ernest Barker, “The English Language—Literature and National Character,” Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, unmarked news cuttings in Newspaper Cuttings, p. 51; Trevelyan, “Bunyan's England”; Arthur, , A History of Story-Telling: Studies in the Development of Narrative (London, 1909), pp. 131–32Google Scholar; Mackail, J. W., “The Pilgrim's Progress”: A Lecture Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (London, 1924), p. 5Google Scholar.

144 Bebbington, D. W., The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, 1870–1914 (London, 1982), pp. 106–20Google Scholar.

145 Ibid., pp. 120–21.

146 Cockett, “Foreword,” in John Bunyan's England. For details on Cockett, see Tibbutt, , Bunyan Meeting, pp. 90–96Google Scholar.

147 Court, , Institutionalizing English Literature, pp. 131, 137Google Scholar.

148 Froude, , Bunyan, p. 1Google Scholar.

149 Law, Alice, “Some Aspects of The Pilgrim's Progress,” Empire Review 46, no. 318 (1927): 55Google Scholar.

150 Montague, C. J., “Bunyan for the Matabele,” Chronicle of the London Missionary Society, no. 11 (1902), p. 252Google Scholar.

151 Ibid.

152 United Society for Christian Literature, “The King's Business: Literature for Africa,” One-Hundred-and-Forty-Seventh Annual Report (London, 1948), p. 161Google Scholar.

153 Report of Special Service at Westminster Abbey, 27 November 1928, Bedford Library, Bunyan Collection, unmarked news cutting, Newspaper Cuttings, p. 21.

154 Fitzgerald, W. B., The Pilgrim Road (London, 1915), p. 11Google Scholar.

155 Knox, Christina, “Introduction,” in The Pilgrim's Progress, by Bunyan, John (London, 1923), p. xiiGoogle Scholar.

156 Noyes, Alfred, “Bunyan—a Revaluation,” The Bookman 76, no. 445 (1928): 13–17Google Scholar.

157 Ibid. p. 15.

158 These responses appear in The Bookman 75, no. 446 (1928): 97–104Google Scholar.

159 Noyes, Alfred, “Mr. Alfred Noyes' Rejoinder,” The Bookman 75, no. 446 (1928): 104Google Scholar.

160 Sharrock, Roger, ed., Bunyan, “The Pilgrim's Progress”: A Casebook (London, 1976), p. 22Google Scholar.

161 Noyes, , “Bunyan,” pp. 14, 16, 17Google Scholar, and “Mr. Alfred Noyes' Rejoinder,” p. 106.

162 Dictionary of National Biography, 5th ed., s.v., “Noyes, Alfred.”

163 Thorne, Eagleton, Literary Theory, pp. 30–37Google Scholar; Susan, , Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-Century England (Stanford, Calif., 1999), pp. 150–54Google Scholar.

164 Leavis, Q. D., Fiction and the Reading Public (London, 1939), p. 101Google Scholar.

165 Leavis, F. R., “Bunyan through Modern Eyes,” in The Common Pursuit (London, 1952), p. 206Google Scholar.

166 Thorne, Congregational Missions.

167 Ibid., pp. 58–68, 70, 72.

168 Ibid., chap. 4.

169 Ibid.