Tom Paine

The radical writer Tom Paine (1737-1809) has become a neglected figure, but this work argues that he should be rightly regarded as an original thinker, whose publications contributed to revolutionary discourses in America, France and Britain in the late 18th Century. He deserves to be remembered in the United States for his writings on the American cause of independence, and in Britain he was notorious as the author of Rights of Man. His less well known works, above all Agrarian Justice, can also be seen as making Paine the prophet of the modern welfare state.