Back to the Library
Early Modern · 1680
The Life and Death of Mr Badman
John Bunyan · 1628–1688
Read elsewhere
What it is
The biography of a thoroughly bad man — a cheating tradesman and cruel husband — told as a conversation between two neighbours who knew him.
Why it lasted
A realistic counterpart to the allegory of Pilgrim's Progress, and one of the earliest English works to read like a novel of ordinary life.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
Read next