John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress – between classical and marginal

The paper attempts to determine the significance of first Bulgarian translations of Pilgrim's Progress made during ХІХth Century. John Bunyan is ranked among the most influential on the development of human thought writers and has his deserved place among such authors as John Milton and Daniel Defoe not only as their contemporary but with his ideological and religious views and with his creative ideas, but he could not reach their popularity in Bulgaria. The paper also draws attention to the high level achieved by first Bulgarian translator of the work Dr. Albert Long (1865) and presents some reviews in periodicals. It considers the reasons for the troubled Bulgarian reception of one of the first translated English authors, who was banned and censored during the time of socialist realism.