Rare. There is a complete set (with colouring by hand) in the British Museum. There are also complete sets at Yale and Harvard and the Bridwell Library.
A fine set of twelve “small prints, very saleable and cheap” illustrating the major scenes in John Bunyan’s immensely popular and influential allegorical tale, Pilgrim’s Progess.
This set is part of a series of 31 half sheet prints produced by Carington Bowles and listed in his New and Enlarged Catalogue for 1784. The catalogue suggests that the engravings - “when coloured, framed and glazed” - could, “make elegant and pleasing Furniture.”
The catalogue further states: “To the admirers of John Bunyan the above set of prints are recommended as very entertaining and instructive. When framed and glazed, properly coloured, they make neat furniture, and are always to be had ready finished” (p.145).
The prints are offered alongside similar sets illustrating popular novels such as Robinson Crusoe, Tristram Shandy and Pamela. These cheap and widely distributed sets of plates would have been fundamental in planting some of the most famous scenes in English literature in the minds of readers (and perhaps even non-readers) whose primary exposure to Bunyan’s famous story may have been through these prints. The prints were most likely pinned-up (possibly in a child’s room) or framed and hung for a time and this, and the “cheap” production, no doubt accounts for their scarcity.
Some of the prints from this set are particularly striking, for example no.7 shows Christian battling with the Appollyon (a hideous demon figure with wings and fire erupting from its stomach), no.8 showing Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and no.10 showing Christian “confined in Vanity Fair” which seems to be more of a comment on late 18th-century London presented in the style of William Hogarth with satirical signs advertising “Hair dress’d, in the new Taste by Folly, Fashion, and Co” and a sign for an establishment run by “Nick Fraudall.”
