Bunyan's "Journey to Hell" question

[reaganmarsh]

Greetings,

I read somewhere a while back that Bunyan didn't write "Journey to Hell," though it is often credited to him. Do any of you know whether this is true? (I've not read the book; just curious.)

Thanks!

 

[Pilgrim]

If I'm not mistaken it is a modernized "Life and Death of Mr. Badman," which is one of his major publications and a sequel to Pilgrim's Progress. (But it's certainly a journey to a different place!) In that it is modernized one could say he "didn't write it." I have no idea how faithful it is to the original work. Whitaker House is also known for errors in their reprints of old books so I tend to avoid them altogether. (I found an obvious error in their version of Spurgeon's "Soulwinner" and one that to me made no sense unless it was changed deliberately.) There are of course many modernized versions of The Pilgrim's Progress as well.

I think questions have been raised about "Reprobation Asserted." There is a Pilgrim's Progress Part III that some have attributed to him but the overwhelming consensus is that it is not Bunyan's.

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

Somewhere among my books I have a copy of "Bunyan's visions of heaven and hell" or something like that -- I'll have to take a look. On Amazon I found a review that said of "Journey...", "This is actually a retitled and edited version of John Bunyan's, 'The Life and Death of Mr. Badman,' which is otherwise rather hard to locate these days." If one has the collected works of JB one could see if it is in there.

 

[Pilgrim]

You can get "Life and Death" online as well. I'm pretty sure Chapel Library has it available in PDF format. I've seen recent reprints of it by publishers that are unknown to me as well. I never know if I should spring for those or not since some of those types of reprints are OCR'd and can have many errors. It is in the collected works.

As far as I know, everything or very nearly everything written by Bunyan is in the collected works. Some have come up with critical texts of "Pilgrim's Progress" and maybe other works that are aimed at correcting errors in some earlier publications of Bunyan works. But I'd think it's nothing too major. Oxford has come out with several editions of "Pilgrims Progress." I've picked up two recent ones in the past few years, but I think one may be by a different publisher. And Barry Horner produced a critical text of "Pilgrims Progress" in recent years.

 

[reaganmarsh]

Guys, thank you for the replies! I am grateful for your familiarity with Bunyan and willingness to help me!