ANNIVERSARIES
A political pamphlet becomes a publishing sensation – and sows the seeds for independence
Few pamphlets have ever caused a greater stir than Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. After it was published in Philadelphia on 10 January 1776, it became a huge success in the American colonies and was popular in Britain and France too. Such was the demand that in the first year alone it went through some 25 editions, not including summaries and copies. Probably no printed publication in history had ever had such an immediate impact: as one historian remarked two centuries later, a modern equivalent would have to sell millions of copies within a few months to cause a similar furore.
Born in Norfolk, England, Paine had been in the American colonies for barely a year when he decided to put pen to paper. Although fighting between the colonists and the British had already broken out, the rebels had not yet committed themselves to independence. This was where Common Sense came in. The American cause, said Paine, was the “cause of all mankind... Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression... We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Paine’s audience loved it. “Without the pen of the author of Common Sense,” said the future president John Adams, “the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.” Yet after falling out with his publishers and relinquishing his copyright, Paine never saw a penny of the profits.