University of Alberta Libraries

John Bunyan Collection

How does an internationally significant, private book collection from Bedford, England, find its final home at a western Canadian university? In the case of Ralph Ford's collection of John Bunyan, the seventeenth-century author of The Pilgrim's Progress, the facts, while less than exotic, are nonetheless instructive.

Ford, a businessman called by his bookseller "a pertinacious and knowledgeable enthusiast," had been collecting Bunyan's works over a period of three decades in Bunyan's home town of Bedford. In 1964, when he decided to part with them, London antiquarian book dealer Alan G. Thomas acquired them. Ford wished the volumes to remain a collection, so Thomas offered them as such, although there was a great deal of interest from major institutions such as the British Library in buying choice individual volumes in order to fill gaps in their holdings.

In a 1990 interview, Dr James F. Forrest, then a Bunyan scholar from the University of Alberta, recalled: "In the mid-1960s we were just beginning to build up the library for graduate programs. I heard about the Ford Collection, spoke to Bruce Peel (then University Librarian), got him interested, made a few phone calls, negotiated a price, and the collection was ours. It seemed a lot of money at the time (around £3,000) but it has certainly appreciated since then." Forrest came to the University of Alberta in 1960. Born in Glasgow, he did not recall reading Bunyan as a child, but discovered him first at the University of Glasgow, where he did his Bachelor of Literature research on Bunyan. His PhD at Cornell University was on Milton, but continued to do more research on Bunyan throughout his career. "Circumstances led me to it, and Bunyan also meant more to me. He's been steadily growing in academic interest during these years," he said.

At a Bunyan conference in 1988, Forrest met the dean of Baylor University. The dean, a Bunyan enthusiast, mentioned that Baylor had been on the verge of buying the Ford Collection too, but was beaten to the punch by Alberta.

The historical circumstances which make this collection so important were vividly described by Thomas, the bookseller, over 40 years ago, in his Bunyan catalogue, and the problems of Bunyan collecting are even greater today: "It would be idle to suppose that an equal library could be gathered during the next 30 years. Seventeenth-century books, especially those of prime literary merit, have been increasingly scarce of late; a great tide has flowed into university libraries, never to return. The early editions of John Bunyan were almost entirely purchased by men in humble circumstances, small tradesmen and craftsmen living in cottages." For once, the country house library played almost no part in the preservation of literature.

Bunyan himself said that his books "being little, may best suit such as have shallow purses, short memories, and but little time to spare, which usually is the lot of the poorer sort of men."

These volumes were cheaply produced, bound in sheepskin, and then read to extinction. They were eagerly passed from hand to hand until they were worn out. Some editions, consequently, have not survived at all. No other book has been read and re-read so constantly by children over so many years as The Pilgrim's Progress. As a result it is more difficult to find early editions of Bunyan than of almost any other major English author. A Shakespeare First Folio can be found provided lots of money is available. This is not the case with Bunyan. One of England's leading collectors told Thomas, "I try to buy every early Bunyan that comes up for sale, but they don't come up!"

Scarcity has certainly made it difficult to add to the Ford Collection in recent times, and gaps will undoubtedly remain. Consider the following rarities in the Ford Collection. Of the eleven editions (1678-88) published in Bunyan's lifetime, the third edition of 1679 is the most important and complete text. There are six copies known in libraries around the world. Our copy of the tenth edition (1685) is one of six known copies, while the seventeenth (1710) is one of three known copies. Consider further the rarity of over sixty sermons and religious works by Bunyan. His first published work, Some Gospel Truths Opened (1656) is known in only two libraries: the British Library and the University of Alberta. Grace Abounding (1666), his spiritual autobiography, is one of his scarcest works in all pre-1800 editions, and no copy survives of the second or fourth editions.

Because of this dilemma, nineteenth-century editions as well as translations into foreign languages, have been pursued to enrich the collection. Though often uncommon, they can be located through persistent searching. The Pilgrim's Progress has been translated into dozens of languages because of its use as a Christian tract, so this is a large area. A 1956 Inuit translation was added to the collection, and Athabasca University presented the Library with the uncommon American edition of 1794 (Boston) for the University's 75th anniversary. The Ford Collection has more than 300 volumes and 80 pre-1800 editions of The Pilgrim's Progress.

Who uses the Ford Collection? England's Oxford University Press has. The Press began a large-scale Bunyan edition for scholars in 1976, and for The Holy War the Ford copy was used as the basic text. The Oxford edition of The Barren Fig Tree shows a photograph of the Ford copy as its frontispiece. Forrest, who co-edited the Oxford Holy War, completed The Life and Death of Mr. Badman in 1988. On this continent Alberta's Bunyan collection is second only to the Huntington Library, which places it ahead of the New York Public Library's extensive holdings.

Among the more regular users of the Collection are instructors of children's literature, who usually include The Pilgrim's Progress in their course syllabi. It is also included in Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature courses. Progress is sometimes taught in English novel courses, though strictly speaking it is not a novel. "The work's purpose is different from a novel," Forrest explained. "It's definitely a didactic, allegorical work, but its tendency toward realism, its use of dialogue and the narrative control which made it a runaway best-seller make it an important precursor of the novel."

In a 2006 interview, Professor David Gay, a Bunyan scholar from the University of Alberta, explains why the Bruce Peel Library is fortunate to have the Collection:

The collection has fostered a strong sense of scholarly community on a global level...many of the graduate students who worked with the collection are now, or have been, tenured professors at Canadian institutions ranging from Regent's College in Vancouver to the University of Prince Edward Island. It was also natural that the International John Bunyan Society should rest in part on the foundation of the collection. Its inaugural conference, held here in 1995, featured a special exhibit of the collection: "John Bunyan: The Books He Read, The Words He Wrote," with some distinguished international scholars and a new generation of graduate students in attendance. The society is now proceeding to its fifth triennial conference in 2007, and has members from Japan, Israel, France, Britain, the U.S., Canada, and other countries. The collection held pride of place at the inception of this society, showing how scholarly community as well as research can be formed and supported by these books.

Today, these volumes hold immeasurable value to scholars from around the world. In recent years, Gay used parts of the Collection to edit Awakening Words: John Bunyan and the Language of Community (2000), and he is currently working on conference papers that draw on this prior research. When asked about the reasons that he introduces students to the rare Bunyan volumes, Gay explained:

Teaching requires us to instill a strong sense of the past. In this respect, the collection can be a moment of revelation more than instruction for many students. The books are a tangible link to an historic period on a broad level, but also to the minds and experiences of real people on another as students appreciate how these books have passed through the hands of actual readers for generations. The physical features of the books also bring the past to life in ways that modern paperbacks and anthologies cannot quite achieve, as in editions with unique illustrations, prefatory material, or marginal features. The translations into Cree and Inuit also impress students with the sheer effort, purpose, and dedication of book making on the part of missionaries.

Bunyan figures prominently in such modern critical concerns as reader/response studies, which explore the involvement of the reader in the reading process and the demands made by a work upon the reader's own imaginative resources. Because of Alberta's remarkable collection a number of dissertations and theses have been written here. Topics have ranged from millenarianism, autobiography, and the use of the allegoric mode, to the influences of Luther and Calvin, and a comparison of Bunyan's language with that of John Dryden. Scholars like Gay continue to impress upon students how the early editions of Bunyan are invaluable to their research. In fact, these splendid books have placed the Bruce Peel Library on a scale with the world-class research libraries in this area.