Great books with poor sequels

John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress", though written for theological reasons, remains a literary masterpiece, rich in imagination with a gallery of appropriately named characters & places, which have become intertwined with the usage of the English language. But the sequel, dealing with Christiana's following of her husband Christian's journey with her children, is not so exciting, neither has it so many memorable encounters as in the first part.

Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" was a "tour de force" at the very beginning of the novel writing era of English literature, with a meticulous reconstruction of how a single man can survive alone with minimal impedimenta & maximum ingenuity for many years. But the sequel, in which he revisits his island, degenerates into a familiar story of western conversion & colonialism going hand in hand. The saving grace is the first part is available as a stand-alone edition.

Louisa May Alcott's classic "Little Women" is a timeless novel of four differently talented sisters coming of age in late 19th century U.S.A. But it's sequel "Good wives", unfortunately mostly issued along with the first part, deals with the prosaic, unnecessarily detailed account of them getting married & carrying on humdrum lives.

George MacDonald, a childhood favourite of both Tolkien & Lewis, wrote a marvelous fairy tale of "The Princess & the Goblin." But the sequel, which makes the miner's son Curdie deservedly marrying the Princess, also invests him with a special power of divining the inner nature of people whose hands he touches. Shockingly for a children's book, he finds most of his subjects corrupt. Also at the end of the book, the Royal couple die childless & the empire is destroyed in a dystopian ending.