Overview
- Published on January 10, 1776, Common Sense spread through roughly 25 colonial editions that year, pushing hesitant Americans toward a clean break with Britain.
- Paine wrote in plain, performative prose designed for taverns and coffeehouses, using emphatic typography to guide public readings and stoke persuasion.
- The pamphlet mounted a sweeping attack on monarchy as illegitimate and idolatrous, reframing the debate from parliamentary disputes to a rejection of kingship.
- Paine cast an expansive vision for a self-governing refuge for liberty and equality, declaring that Americans could “begin the world over again.”
- A new FIRE podcast with historian Richard Bell charts Paine’s ascent and later downfall through Rights of Man and The Age of Reason, noting his exile, imprisonment in France, and lonely death reportedly witnessed by six mourners.