Thomas Paine
Political writer and revolutionary
Thomas Paine was an English-born American political writer and revolutionary. His pamphlet Common Sense helped inspire the American colonies to declare independence in 1776.
2 summaries 35 min of listening
Born 1737 in Thetford Died 1809
Influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
About Thomas Paine
Paine was born in Thetford, Norfolk, in 1737. He moved to the British American colonies in 1774 with help from Benjamin Franklin, arriving in time to take part in the American Revolution. He wrote Common Sense in 1776, followed by The American Crisis, a series of pamphlets in support of independence. He later wrote The Rights of Man, published in 1791, partly to defend the French Revolution against critics such as Edmund Burke. In 1792 he was convicted in absentia in England of seditious libel. He then went to France, where he was elected to the National Convention, was imprisoned in December 1793 and was freed in 1794. His pamphlet The Age of Reason argued for deism and free thought and against institutional religion. Paine returned to America in 1802 and died on June 8, 1809.