Alan Vermilye

A Bunyan Story You Might Not be Familiar With

June 7, 2022

After completing my revision of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, I was torn by which of his books I should approach next. It’s been so encouraging to receive the countless emails from many of you requesting that I begin working on its sequel detailing the journey of Christian’s wife, Christiana, and their children on their journey to faith.

That, of course, would have been the obvious choice! But for some reason, I was strangely drawn to another story—one quite a bit darker. It’s the book that I just released and want to share with you now titled The Life and Death of Mr. Badman.

Interestingly enough, and unbeknownst to me, Bunyan published this book in 1680, just two years after The Pilgrim’s Progress and before publishing the sequel with Christiana in 1685. I was encouraged to know he, too, was drawn first to presenting a counterpart to his most famous of allegories.

Like Pilgrim’s Progress, I spent countless hours converting Bunyan’s antiquated text into simple, conversational English. Bunyan presented his original book in the form of a dialogue between two men, thinking it would make it more enjoyable for the reader. Maybe 350 years ago, but certainly not today! So, I created a storyline and divided it into chapters that I believe helps the overall narrative flow better.

Over the next week, I will share more of my thoughts with you about this book, but in the meantime, if you want to compare the original translation with mine, click here. Or if you want to check out a sample of the book, click here.

Read the Reviews!

The Brown Chair Books Reviewer Team has been working over time the past month not only reviewing the book, but providing valuable edits and feedback. I appreciate everyone of you! Here a few of the latest reviews:

Whereas the original writing of Bunyan was presented as just a conversation, Alan Vermilye has added depth and background information to the original writing and made it into an easy to follow, flowing style, with modern language and setting.

This is a great cautionary tale that would be perfect for a high school group study. I especially think this would help those pre-marriage, giving them reason to pray and consult trusted advisors before they make a life altering leap. Kudos to Alan Vermilye for making this a readable format while staying true to the complex issues

Though this book is dark in nature, I was pleasantly surprised to see how well Alan Vermilye was able to keep to John Bunyan’s original story, even while changing the layout from a dialogue to a storyline format.