Tom Paine and William Cobbett were at the heart of the revolutionary changes which swept over the North Atlantic world during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Both men came from the ranks of the "common people" in England, both found t

Wilson traces four major themes in the thought of Paine and Cobbett: the relationship between British radical ideas and American revolutionary ideology; the eighteenth-century revolution in rhetorical theory; the effect of the American and French Revolutions on British popular radicalism; and the American attempt to turn the United States into a new "empire of liberty". He challenges the view that Paine created a new literary style for a new audience of artisans and labourers, arguing instead that this style was part of a broader revolution in rhetoric, and discusses the interconnections between Paine's English and American careers. Wilson shows that the tension between the ideal and the real is central to understanding Cobbett. He analyzes Cobbett's American experiences, and examines the role of Paine's writings and the United States in Cobbett's subsequent career as a radical in England. The epilogue returns to the differences and similarities in Paine's and Cobbett's careers, examines their strategies for change, and discusses their ambiguous legacies to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A fresh new look at the Enlightenment intellectual who became the most controversial of America's founding fathers Despite his being a founder of both the United States and the French Republic, the creator of the phrase "United States of America," and the author of Common Sense, Thomas Paine is the least well known of America's founding fathers. This edifying biography by Craig Nelson traces Paine's path from his years as a London mechanic, through his emergence as the voice of revolutionary fervor on two continents, to his final days in the throes of dementia. By acquainting us as never before with this complex and combative genius, Nelson rescues a giant from obscurity-and gives us a fascinating work of history.

A sweeping exploration of revolutionary ideas that traveled the Atlantic in the late eighteenth century Nation-based histories cannot do justice to the rowdy, radical interchange of ideas around the Atlantic world during the tumultuous years from 1776 to 1804. National borders were powerless to restrict the flow of enticing new visions of human rights and universal freedom. This expansive history explores how the revolutionary ideas that spurred the American and French revolutions reverberated far and wide, connecting European, North American, African, and Caribbean peoples more closely than ever before. Historian Janet Polasky focuses on the eighteenth-century travelers who spread new notions of liberty and equality. It was an age of itinerant revolutionaries, she shows, who ignored borders and found allies with whom to imagine a borderless world. As paths crossed, ideas entangled. The author investigates these ideas and how they were disseminated long before the days of instant communications and social media or even an international postal system. Polasky analyzes the paper records--books, broadsides, journals, newspapers, novels, letters, and more--to follow the far-reaching trails of revolutionary zeal. What emerges clearly from rich historic records is that the dream of liberty among America's founders was part of a much larger picture. It was a dream embraced throughout the far-flung regions of the Atlantic world.

Since its publication in 1976, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America hasbeen recognized as a classic study of the career of the foremost politicalpamphleteer of the Age of Revolution, and a model of how to integrate thepolitical, intellectual, and social history of the struggle for Americanindependence.Foner skillfully brings together an account of Paine's remarkable career witha careful examination of the social worlds within which he operated, in GreatBritain, France, and especially the United States. He explores Paine's politicaland social ideas and the way he popularized them by pioneering a new form ofpolitical writing, using simple, direct language and addressing himself to areading public far broader than previous writers had commanded. He shows whichof Paine's views remained essentially fixed throughout his career, whiledirecting attention to the ways his stance on social questions evolved under thepressure of events. This enduring work makes clear the tremendous impact Paine'swriting exerted on the American Revolution, and suggests why he failed to have asimilar impact during his career in revolutionary France. And it offers newinsights into the nature and internal tensions of the republican outlook thathelped to shape the Revolution.In a new preface, Foner discusses the origins of this book and the influencesof the 1960s and 1970s on its writing. He also looks at how Paine has beenadopted by scholars and politicians of many stripes, and has even been calledthe patron saint of the Internet.

First published in 1985. In the late autumn of 1774 at the age of 37 Tom Paine arrived in Philadelphia. Eighteen months later he had established himself as a seminal figure in the Independence movement. It was the start of a career in which he became the first US Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; was outlawed from England by Pitt for the publication of the second part of the Rights of Man; delivered a final plea for the life of Louis XVI in the National Convention of 1794; was imprisoned in the Luxembourg, and sentenced to death by Robespierre. After a sad and lonely death in New Rochelle Cobbett brought back his bones to England: ‘to light a taper for liberty.’ Yet Paine remains a man without a past; a man who seemingly burst on the world scene as a full-blown radical at 37 years of age. No one had attempted to explore and interpret the critical, shaping influences of his early and middle life. Yet such background is crucial to explaining all the rest. Without a clear understanding of his Quaker inheritance; of his childhood years in Thetford; of his early philosophical and political apprenticeship in London; and of the six formative years he spent at Lewes, the later man and his radicalism are totally incomprehensible. Thus, the author’s objective is to place Paine in his times; to interpret the evolution of his political, social and theological ideas. Paine is little more than a cardboard cut-out moving through history in the majority of biographies that have already been published. This book sees the world through Paine’s own eyes and provides a human interpretation not only of ‘the Age of Revolution’ but also of ‘the maker of revolutions’ himself. To Napoleon, Paine was the man to whom: ‘a statue in gold should be erected in every town’; to Theodore Roosevelt he was ‘that filthy little atheist’; to Michael Foot: ‘the greatest exile that has ever left England’s shores.’ To understand the thinking of a man who can provoke such reactions, it is necessary to understand both the man and the times through which he lived. This title will be of great interest to students of history, politics, and philosophy.

William Cobbett by G.K. Chesterton is the biography of an English pamphleteer, journalist, politician, and farmer born in Farnham, Surrey. He was one of an agrarian faction seeking to reform Parliament, abolish "rotten boroughs", restrain foreign activity, and raise wages to ease poverty among farm laborers and small landholders. Cobbett backed lower taxes, saving, reversing common enclosures, and resisting the 1821 gold standard.

This major collection demonstrates the extent to which Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an inspiration to the Americans in their struggle for independence, a passionate supporter of the French Revolution and perhaps the outstanding English radical writer of his age. It contains all of Paine's major works including "The Rights of Man", his groundbreaking defence of the revolutionary cause in France, "Common Sense", which won thousands over to the side of the American rebels, and the first part of "The Age of Reason" (Part One), a ferocious attack on Christianity. The shorter pieces - on capital punishment, social reform and the abolition of slavery - also confirm the great versatility and power of this master of democratic prose.