Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine and his pamphlet “Common Sense” which was published in Philadelphia in January 1776 and promoted the argument for American independence from Britain. Addressed to The Inhabitants of America, it sold one hundred and fifty thousand copies in the first few months and is said, proportionately, to be the best-selling book in American history. Paine had arrived from England barely a year before. He vigorously attacked monarchy generally and George the Third in particular. He argued the colonies should abandon all hope of resolving their dispute with Britain and declare independence immediately. Many Americans were scandalised. More were inspired and, for Paine’s vision of America’s independent future, he has been called a Founding Father of the United States.
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Guests
- Kathleen Burk
11 episodes
Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London - Nicholas Guyatt
4 episodes
University Lecturer in American History at the University of Cambridge -
Peter Thompson No other episodes
Associate Professor of American History at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College
Reading list
-
Tom Paine's America: The Rise and Fall of Transatlantic Radicalism in the Early Republic
Seth Cotlar (University of Virginia Press, 2011) Google Books → -
Scandal and Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy
Marcus Daniel (Oxford University Press, 2010) Google Books → -
Passion is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution
Nicole Eustace (University of North Carolina Press, 2008) Google Books → -
Tom Paine and Revolutionary America
Eric Foner (Oxford University Press, 2004) Google Books → -
Tom Paine: A Political Life
John Keane (Bloomsbury, 1995) Google Books → -
46 Pages: Thomas Paine, Common Sense, and the Turning Point to Independence
Scott Liell (Running Press, 2003) Google Books → -
The Unknown American Revolution; The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America
Gary B. Nash (Jonathan Cape, 2006) Google Books → -
Thomas Paine: His Life, His Time and the Birth of Modern Nations
Craig Nelson (Profile Books, 2007) -
The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding
Eric Nelson (Harvard University Press, 2014) Google Books → -
Thomas Paine
Mark Philp (Oxford University Press, 2007) Google Books → -
Rum Punch and Revolution: Taverngoing and Public Life in Eighteenth Century Philadelphia
Peter Thompson (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) Google Books → -
Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different
Gordon S. Wood (Penguin, 2006) Google Books →
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Programme ID: b06wg9dw
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06wg9dw
Auto-category: 973.3 (Revolutionary period in United States history, 1775-1783)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello. In January 1776 in Philadelphia, an anonymous pamphlet was published entitled Common Sense, addressed to the inhabitants of America.