The Pilgrim's Progress
The explicit Protestant theology of The Pilgrim's Progress made it popular. Bunyan's plain style breathes life into abstract ideas such as 'greed', 'envy', 'pride'. These ideas are turned into imaginary people, whom Christian meets and talks to, on his way to Heaven. Samuel Johnson said that "this is the great merit of the book, that the most cultivated man cannot find anything to praise more highly, and the child knows nothing more amusing". Three years after its publication (1681), it was reprinted in colonial America, and was widely read in the Puritan colonies.