A Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People: John Bunyan and His Church

Description

John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is one of the most important works of English literature. Translated into more than 200 languages, it once rivalled the Bible in popularity in the English-speaking world. In A Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People, Christopher Hill reassesses the well-known author to recover Bunyan's significance as a preacher-a man whose nonconformist religion led him into conflict with the Quakers and resulted in long years of imprisonment. It was while confined that he wrote his most famous works. This classic biography by one of the leading historians of the seventeenth century offers an extraordinary insight into one of Britain's most influential writers.

Christopher Hill was the pre-eminent historian of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English history, and one of the most distinguished historians of recent times. Fellow historian E.P. Thompson once referred to him as the dean and paragon of English historians. From 1965 to 1978 he was Master of Balliol College. After leaving Balliol he was for two years a Visiting Professor at the Open University. Dr Hill, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the British Academy. He died in 2003.

Magnificent and searching study . provocative, absorbing and hugely knowledgeable. * Sunday Times * Hill claims to put Bunyan back into his 'revolutionary age' . and is totally successful. * London Review of Books * The commanding interpreter of seventeenth-century England. * Guardian * The dean and paragon of English historians. -- E.P. Thompson, author of The Making of the English Working Class Wide-ranging, popular and immensely prolific . the dominant figure in studies of the period. * Telegraph *