The writings of Thomas Paine helped shape the American nation and left their imprint on democratic thought all over the world. This two-volume set represents an attempt to make these writings available to both the general reader and the student. Every effort has been made to include all of Paine's writings available at present, and to present them in a manner that would make clear their historical background. Emphasis has been placed throughout on presenting Paine's writings in their essential clarity, and for this purpose efforts have been made, without in any sense distorting Paine's meaning, to modernize the spelling, capitalization and punctuation wherever it was necessary to make the meaning clear to a present day reader. --Publisher description.

Thomas Paine is a unique political thinker who has continued to attract scholarly and popular attention from the time he wrote about both the American and French Revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century. This collection brings together the most recent essays debating the meaning and relevance of Paine's works. It includes an historiographical survey of scholarship about Paine and articles by the leading authorities in the field. The essays survey his life, analyze his ideas, place them in their social and intellectual context, and appraise their significance today.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was England's greatest revolutionary: no other reformer was as actively involved in events of the scale of the American and French Revolutions, and none wrote such best-selling texts with the impact of Common Sense and Rights of Man. No one else combined the roles of activist and theorist, or did so in the 'age of revolutions', fundamental as it was to the emergence of the 'modern world'. But his fame meant that he was taken up and reinterpreted for current use by successive later commentators and politicians, so that the 'historic Paine' was too often obscured by the 'usable Paine'. J. C. D. Clark explains Paine against a revised background of early- and mid-eighteenth-century England. He argues that Paine knew and learned less about events in America and France than was once thought. He de-attributes a number of publications, and passages, hitherto assumed to have been Paine's own, and detaches him from a number of causes (including anti-slavery, women's emancipation, and class action) with which he was once associated. Paine's formerly obvious association with the early origin and long-term triumph of natural rights, republicanism, and democracy needs to be rethought. As a result, Professor Clark offers a picture of radical and reforming movements as more indebted to the initiatives of large numbers of men and women in fast-evolving situations than to the writings of a few individuals who framed lasting, and eventually triumphant, political discourses.

Definitive, concise, and very interesting...From William Shakespeare to Winston Churchill, the Very Interesting People series provides authoritative bite-sized biographies of Britain's most fascinating historical figures - people whose influence and importance have stood the test of time.Each book in the series is based upon the biographical entry from the world-famous Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.The Very Interesting People series includes the following titles:1.William Shakespeare by Peter Holland2. George Eliot by Rosemary Ashton3. Charles Dickens by Michael Slater4. Charles Darwin by Adrian Desmond, James Moore, and Janet Browne5. Isaac Newton by Richard S.Westfall6. Elizabeth I by Patrick Collinson7. George III by John Cannon8. Benjamin Disraeli by Jonathan Parry9. Christopher Wren by Kerry Downes10. John Ruskin by Robert Hewison11. James Joyce by Bruce Stewart12. John Milton by Gordon Campbell13. Jane Austen by Marilyn Butler14. Henry VIII by Eric Ives15. Queen Victoria by K. D. Reynolds and H. C. G. Matthew16. Winston Churchill by Paul Addison17. Oliver Cromwell by John Morrill18. Thomas Paine by Mark Philp19. J. M. W. Turner by Luke Herrmann20. William and Mary by Tony Claydon and W. A. Speck

Thomas Paine was one of the most remarkable political writers of the modern world and the greatest radical of a radical age. Through writings like Common Sense—and words such as "The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth," "We have it in our power to begin the world over again," and "These are the times that try men's souls"—he not only turned America's colonial rebellion into a revolutionary war but, as Harvey J. Kaye demonstrates, articulated an American identity charged with exceptional purpose and promise.

At the present day, when there is renewed interest in the concept of human rights and in the application of this concept to the problems of government,! it may be instructive to review an eighteenth-century dispute which was concerned precisely with these themes. Nor should the investigation be any less interesting because the disputants were Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine: both these men have also been the object of renewed attention and study in recent years. Critical work on the biography and bibliography of Paine is being done by Professor Aldridge and Col. Richard Gimbel respectively;2 while Burke is being well looked after, not only by the able team of experts who, under the leadership of Professor Copeland, are engaged in producing the critical edition of his Correspondence, but also by such individual scholars as D. C. Bryant, C. B. Cone, T. H. D. Mahoney, 3 P. J. Stanlis, C. Parkin, F. Canavan, and A. Cobban. But though Burke and Paine are being studied separately, little work appears to have been done on the relationship between them, apart from an 4 essay by Professor Copeland published more than twelve years ago. It is hoped that the present study, while it does not claim to add anything to the facts about Burke and Paine already known to his- 1 See Nehemiah Robinson, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Dictionary of Early American Philosophers, which contains over 400 entries by nearly 300 authors, provides an account of philosophical thought in the United States and Canada between 1600 and 1860. The label of "philosopher" has been broadly applied in this Dictionary to intellectuals who have made philosophical contributions regardless of academic career or professional title. Most figures were not academic philosophers, as few such positions existed then, but they did work on philosophical issues and explored philosophical questions involved in such fields as pedagogy, rhetoric, the arts, history, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, medicine, anthropology, religion, metaphysics, and the natural sciences. Each entry begins with biographical and career information, and continues with a discussion of the subject's writings, teaching, and thought. A cross-referencing system refers the reader to other entries. The concluding bibliography lists significant publications by the subject, posthumous editions and collected works, and further reading about the subject.

Each volume of the Dictionary of World Biography contains 250 entries on the lives of the individuals who shaped their times and left their mark on world history. This is not a who's who. Instead, each entry provides an in-depth essay on the life and career of the individual concerned. Essays commence with a quick reference section that provides basic facts on the individual's life and achievements. The extended biography places the life and works of the individual within an historical context, and the summary at the end of each essay provides a synopsis of the individual's place in history. All entries conclude with a fully annotated bibliography.