JOHN BUNYAN Baptized at Elstow Church, November 30th 1628 Died in London, August 31st 1688 He is buried in the Nonconformist Burial-place Bunhill Fields CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, C. F. CLAY, MANAGER. London: FETTER LANE, E.C. Glasgow: 50, WELLINGTON STREET. Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. [All Rights reserved] NOTE. HE text of Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners TH here adopted is that of the sixth edition published in 1688, the year of Bunyan's death. Till 1883 this was the earliest we possessed but in that year a copy of the first edition of 1666 was acquired for the Library of the British Museum. On comparison it was seen at once that by the time of the sixth edition the work had been greatly enlarged by its author, receiving additions of no fewer than fifty or sixty paragraphs. Of the second edition no copy is known; and all the knowledge we possess of the third edition of 1679 is derived from an item in the Trinity Term Catalogue of Stationers' Hall of that year, recently published by Mr Arber. It would appear that the additions referred to had by this time been made, as this further issue is described as "The Third Edition corrected and much enlarged." Probably in consequence of the expiration of the censorship of the Press in 1679 two other editions followed in quick succession, for that of 1680 is described as the fifth. Of the fourth edition no V NOTE existing copy is known. A unique copy of the fifth edition was included in the Collection of the late W. G. Thorpe, Esq., of the Middle Temple, but in 1904 it was sold and cannot now be traced. The title-page of the first edition is reproduced on p. viii : The supplement to Grace Abounding, entitled A Relation of the Imprisonment was not published during Bunyan's lifetime, nor indeed, as the title indicates, till 1765, remaining till that year in the possession of his family. It was ultimately sold to James Buckland, the publisher in Paternoster Row, for five guineas, by Hannah Bunyan, Bunyan's great granddaughter, who died at Bedford February 15th, 1770, aged seventy-six. It is an eminently characteristic production of Bunyan's pen. Only two The text of The Pilgrim's Progress adopted for Part I is that of the eleventh edition of 1688, the one which received Bunyan's latest emendations. copies of this edition are known the one in the British Museum, which is defective to the extent of having no fewer than nineteen leaves missing; and the other, a perfect copy, and therefore unique, which has furnished the text of the present edition. It has been kindly lent by its owner, an American gentleman, who not only possesses an unrivalled collection of Bunyan first editions, but also the original warrant for Bunyan's committal to the town gaol on Bedford Bridge in 1676, during which second imprisonment of six months he wrote his Pilgrim Dream, |