Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

Celebrating its 335th anniversary, The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan is an allegory about the difficulty for a 17th century Christian to enter heaven. Christian is accompanied Faithful and Hopeful. Throughout the journey Christian is misled and distracted by an large array of disreputable characters. A few being: Talkative, Envy, Superstition, Flatterer, and Ignorance.

Much of the book is a cautionary tale of false roads to salvation:

...unless I could obtain the righteousness of  Man that never had sinned, neither mine own, not all the righteousness in the World could save me.

 This is a dismal view of the requirements of a righteous life, but a great example of allegory.

*The edition I read is from my library: The Riverside Literature Series, Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge, Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by William Vaughn Moody, 1896. This copy has annotations from 1933 by Abraham Klein. It appears to have been later sold to Cynthia Feingold of Scarsdale, NY.