Common Sense

Front Cover
Broadview Press, 2004 M03 16 - 256 pages

When Common Sense was published in January 1776, it sold, by some estimates, a stunning 150,000 copies in the colonies. What exactly made this pamphlet so appealing? This is a question not only about the state of mind of Paine’s audience, but also about the role of public opinion and debate, the function of the press, and the shape of political culture in the colonies.

This Broadview edition of Paine’s famous pamphlet attempts to reconstruct the context in which it appeared and to recapture the energy and passion of the dispute over the political future of the British colonies in North America. Included along with the text of Common Sense are some of the contemporary arguments for and against the Revolution by John Dickinson, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson; materials from the debate that followed the pamphlet’s publication showing the difficulty of the choices facing the colonists; the Declaration of Independence; and the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776.

From inside the book

Contents

I
6
II
7
III
35
IV
37
V
41
VI
43
VII
47
VIII
52
XIII
99
XIV
116
XV
133
XVI
151
XVII
158
XVIII
170
XIX
207
XX
217

IX
61
X
75
XI
76
XII
86
XXI
222
XXII
241
XXV
251
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2004)

Edward Larkin is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Delaware. He is the author of Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution (Cambridge, 2005). His current scholarship focuses on loyalism and empire in the early United States.

Bibliographic information