Thomas Paine Collected Writings, Volume 5

A comprehensive scholarly edition of the writings and correspondence of Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine: Collected Writings is the first major new edition of Paine’s works, bringing together all his writings in six breathtaking volumes that dramatically revise our previous understanding of his activities as a writer and his importance as a democratic theorist in the age of revolutions. It includes about 180 new letters and some two hundred works newly attributed to Paine, with twenty-nine works previously regarded as Paine’s being deattributed. Drawing on pioneering computerized text analysis that makes possible for the first time attributions of anonymous and pseudonymous texts, this collection includes in volumes 5–6 newly identified pamphlets and newspaper and journal contributions, and suggests that Paine was extremely active as a Grub Street oppositional Whig writer in the decade prior to the American Revolution. Many writings from the period of his residence in France (1792–1802) and his subsequent return to the United States are also restored to his published output. Paine emerges as a much more consistent and serious democratic theorist than is often assumed, whose contribution to revolutionary debates in America, Britain, and France were unparalleled in its time.

The supplementary writings in this volume span the years 1758 to 1772, a formative period in which Paine honed his voice as a Grub Street writer and close confederate of Benjamin Franklin. Writing pseudonymously in journals and newspapers, he developed the narrative and ideological traits that would form the basis for his later social and political thought. Commentary by the editors provides invaluable historical context.