A man with a burden on his back leaves the City of Destruction and walks - through the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair and the Valley of the Shadow - toward a city he has only heard of. Bunyan, a tinker's son, wrote it in Bedford jail during twelve years' imprisonment for preaching without a license; for two centuries it was the book English-speaking households owned besides the Bible. The second part, written six years later, sends Christian's wife and children down the same road, where the dangers are not the same ones. Its 68 original illustrations have been carefully restored and coloured for this edition.