John Bunyan

John Bunyan (1628–1688) was an English Puritan preacher and writer, the son of a tinker from Elstow, near Bedford, and a tinker himself. He served in the parliamentary army as a youth, passed through a long religious crisis that he described in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and became a preacher in a Nonconformist congregation. After the Restoration he spent twelve years in Bedford jail for preaching without a license, writing much of the time, and he was imprisoned again in 1676, when he probably completed The Pilgrim's Progress. The Life and Death of Mr. Badman and The Holy War followed.