Meet the Author
Thomas Paine
English-born American · 1737–1809 · Pamphleteer and political writer
Portrait: Auguste Millière / After George Romney / After William Sharp, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
An English-born writer whose pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis argued for American independence in plain, forceful prose.
1 StoryBites Edition1 Speech or essay
Why read Thomas Paine?
Paine wrote for ordinary readers, not scholars, and his sentences are built to be read aloud. The first American Crisis opens with ‘These are the times that try men’s souls’ and uses a dark moment in the war to shame the timid and rally everyone else. Read it for its short, quotable lines and its direct appeals to a reader’s pride and fear.
A life in six dates
- 1737Born in Thetford, England
- 1774Arrives in Philadelphia with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin
- 1776Publishes Common Sense in January
- 1776Publishes the first American Crisis essay in December
- 1791Publishes the first part of Rights of Man
- 1794Publishes the first part of The Age of Reason
- 1809Dies in New York City
Themes across the work
The StoryBites Editions
Context that actually matters
The winter of 1776Washington’s army had retreated across New Jersey and was shrinking when Paine wrote the first Crisis.
Pamphlet cultureCheap printed pamphlets carried political arguments to a wide colonial audience, and Common Sense was a best seller of its day.
The French RevolutionPaine later defended the Revolution in Rights of Man and was elected to France’s National Convention, which shows how far his ideas traveled.