John Bunyan's Works - Introduced
Behind the world's most famous allegorical journey lies a dramatic, centuries-long saga of prison-bound genius, theological firepower, and heart-stopping historical survival. Long before John Bunyan's *The Pilgrim's Progress* captured the global imagination—or became a forgotten classic among modern readers—it was championed by Oxford scholars, published by daring Dissenter booksellers on sixpence budgets, and fiercely defended through works like *The Barren Fig-Tree*, *Come and Welcome to Jesus*, *The Fear of God*, and *The Water of Life*. Yet Bunyan's complete pastoral voice almost vanished forever: it took the fanatical, lifelong obsession of 19th-century book collector George Offor to strip away two centuries of corrupted printings and restore Bunyan's authentic words—only for Offor's irreplaceable library of original 17th-century manuscripts to be consumed in a catastrophic 1865 London warehouse fire just months after his death. The complete three-volume set resting on church library shelves today isn't just a monument to Puritan theology; it is a miracle of literary salvation that survived against all odds.