Vanity Fair (From “The Pilgrim’s Progress”) by John Bunyan. Upton Sinclair, ed. 1915. The Cry for Justice

Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968).
The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

Vanity Fair
(From “The Pilgrim’s Progress”)

By John Bunyan

(English tinker and religious rebel, who was put in prison and there wrote one of the world’s great allegories; 1628–1688)


THEN I saw in my dream, that when they were got out of the wilderness, they presently saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity; and at the town there is a fair kept, called Vanity Fair. It is kept all the year long.… At this fair are all such merchandise sold as houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures; and delights of all sorts, such as harlots, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, precious stones, and what not.	1
And moreover, at this fair there are at all times to be seen jugglings, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves and rogues, and that of every kind.	2
Here are to be seen, too, and that for nothing, thefts, murders, adulteries, false-swearers, and that of a blood-red color.	3