Three hundred years ago the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was rescued from the island of Juan Fernandez, off the coast of Chile, where he had survived for several years stranded and alone. His return to England in February 1709 is said to have inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719).
Selkirk's celebrity contributed to the rise of travel writing as a literary genre, however its origin can be traced back further, to the publication of The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan in 1678, and this engraving (Ref: Sion A 62.4/B88 (1775)) depicts its dramatic opening scene.
It shows the pilgrim, who becomes known as Christian, in the foreground, dressed in rags with a burden on his back as he leaves the City of Destruction. The long twisting road that stretches out into the distance threatens to be hazardous and abound with challenges.
It is thought that Bunyan composed the The Pilgrim's Progress to allegorise his religious experience as a guide to others. He gravely advises his readers to ‘Beware of the by-paths and crooked Paths, Paths in which Men go astray, Paths that lead to Death and Damnation' suggesting that life is a pilgrimage and the progress is psychological rather than geographical.