Common Sense

Thomas Paine was born Thomas Pain in Thetford, England, on January 29, 1737, the son of a poor corset-maker. Paine came to America in 1774, was appointed editor of Pennsylvania Magazine and became active in the call for American independence from England. His revolutionary pamphlet, Common Sense, was published in 1776, sparking some of the first public calls for America to rid itself of British rule. He spent the next fifteen years of his life in England and France and wrote several more political pamphlets, including The American Crisis (1776-1783), Rights of Man (1790), The Age of Reason (1794), and Agrarian Justice (1796).

Richard Beeman is John Welsh Centennial Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of seven previous books, among them The Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution and Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution and editor of the six-volume Penguin Civic Classics series.