To see my full, non-spoiler review: https://christianlovingbooks.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-life-and-death-of-mr-badma... ( )

Mr Badman is a marvellous book which everybody should read, it's beautifully written and very instructive. If you want to get some acquaintance with Bunyan, who is after all a significant author, without doing a lot of reading, skip Pilgrim's Progress and The Holy War and read this.

The book takes the form of a dialog between Mr Wiseman and Mr Attentive. Mr Badman has recently died and Mr Wiseman relates to Mr Attentive a lot of details about Badman's youth, apprenticeship, businesses, pleasures, marriages and quiet death, but with frequent excursions involving anecdotes about other godly and ungodly people, their actions and experiences, and relating everything to the warnings and promises of the Scriptures. As you will expect, Bunyan regards everything that Mr Badman ever said or did as bad: this is how Mr Wiseman tells it and Mr Attentive enthusiastically concurs.

The language of the book, though charming, is of course rather archaic and some readers may fail to understand or miss the point of some little bits, but it shouldn't be a big problem. My edition, an Everyman edition, modernises the spelling at least, and I expect other modern editions do too. The Everyman also gives chapter and verse for the frequent biblical references and quotations, though these days that's hardly necessary, as anybody interested in the context of what Bunyan quotes can easily find it in an on-line Bible (example) even without the exact reference.