Thomas Paine
Sign in to saveAmerican Founding Father, philosopher, and political activist (1737–1809)
AI overview
Thomas Paine was an influential American writer and thinker who played a key role in encouraging colonists to support independence from Britain through his widely read pamphlet *Common Sense*, published in 1776. His ideas about individual rights and democratic government helped shape the founding principles of the United States and continue to influence political thought today.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Born
- 9 February 1737
- Died
- 8 June 1809
- Works
- 873
Top works
- Lettre de Thomas Paine sur les cultes
- Common Sense
- Letter from Thomas Paine to George Washington, President of the United States
- The age of reason
- Prospects on the rubicon, or, An investigation into the causes and consequences of the politics to be agitated at the meeting of Parliament
via Open Library + Wikidata
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 398
- Total plays
- 3,070
Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 – June 8, 1809) was an English pamphleteer, revolutionary, radical, inventor, and intellectual. He lived and worked in Britain until age 37, when he emigrated to the British American colonies, in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contribution was the powerful, widely-read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), advocating colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and of The American Crisis (1776–1783), a pro-revolutionary
Works in European collections
23 objects attributed to Thomas Paine, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana
Article
Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain, February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736] – June 8, 1809; /ˈtɒməs ˈpeɪn/) was an English-born American Founding Father, inventor, political philosopher, and statesman. His pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783) framed the Patriot argument for independence from Great Britain at the outset of the American Revolution. Paine advanced Enlightenment-era arguments for human rights that shaped revolutionary discourse on both sides of the Atlantic.
Born in Thetford, Norfolk, Paine immigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving in time to participate in the American Revolution. Virtually every American Patriot read his 47-page pamphlet Common Sense, which catalyzed the call for independence from Great Britain. He followed that breakthrough with the pro-independence American Crisis pamphlet series. Paine returned to Britain in 1787 and wrote Rights of Man (1791) to rebut critics of the French Revolution, particularly the Anglo-Irish conservative writer Edmund Burke. His authorship of the tract led to a trial and conviction in absentia in England in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel.
Gallery (12)
Connections
Categories
1737 births1809 deaths18th-century American inventors18th-century American male writers18th-century American philosophers18th-century English male writers18th-century English writers19th-century American male writers19th-century American philosophers19th-century English male writersAbolitionists from New York CityActivists from New Rochelle, New York
