This allegory, penned within John Bunyan's prison cell, tells his vision of life's pilgrimage following the character of Christian and his companions as they travel from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City along the road of faith.

Aemilia Bassano Lanier is beautiful and accomplished, but her societal conformity ends there. She frequently cross-dresses to escape her loveless marriage and to gain freedoms only men enjoy-and then a chance encounter with a ragged, little-known poet named Shakespeare changes everything. The two outsiders strike up a literary bargain: they leave plague-ridden London for Italy, where they begin secretly writing comedies together and where Will falls...