Thomas Paine

(b. Jan. 29, 1737, Thetford, Norfolk – d. June 8, 1809, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York, United States of America )

Gender: M

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was the son of a corset-maker who attempted a number of occupations before sailing to America in 1774. There he made his name with a pamphlet, Common Sense (1776), that advocated independence for the American colonies and republican government with a wide democratic franchise. He was hailed as a hero of the American Revolution, but returned to England in 1787. Paine was a supporter of the French Revolution, and set out to refute Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (published November 1790), in his Rights of Man, which attacked the institution of the monarchy and advocated democracy. In January 1791, he gave the manuscript to publisher Joseph Johnson, but a visit by government agents dissuaded Johnson, so Paine gave the book to another publisher and went to Paris, on the advice of William Blake, to avoid arrest. He charged his friends William Godwin, Thomas Brand Hollis, and Thomas Holcroft, with handling the book’s publication and distribution. It appeared on 13th March 1791 and sold up to 200,000 copies in the three years following its publication. The government instigated a campaign to discredit Paine, including sponsoring a scurrilous pamphlet by George Chalmers (under the pseudonym Francis Oldys) that portrayed Paine as a ne’er-do-well, wife-beater and swindler. (The Life of Thomas Paine. One Penny-Worth of Truth, from Thomas Bull to His Brother John, London: Stockdale, 1791). Paine nevertheless went on to issue the second part of the Rights of Man in February 1792, recommending parliamentary reforms to widen representation, and redistributive taxation to provide welfare for the poor. A fierce pamphlet war ensued, in which Paine was both defended and assailed. He was forced to flee to France, tried in Britain for seditious libel and convicted in absentia. He was elected to the revolutionary National Convention, but narrowly escaped execution during the Terror in 1793 and was imprisoned in Paris for nearly a year, but remained in France until 1802 when he moved to New York, where he died, neglected and poverty-stricken, at the age of seventy-two.

Also known as:

Thomas Paine

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