PAINE, Thomas. Rights of Man: being an Answer to Mr. Burke’s Attack on the French Revolution.

PAINE, Thomas. Rights of Man: being an Answer to Mr. Burke’s Attack on the French Revolution. Eighth edition. Bound with: Rights of Man. Part the Second. Combining principle and practice. Eighth edition. London: Printed for J.S. Jordan, No. 166, Fleet-Street, 1791/1792. pp. x, [1], 8-171, xv, [1], 178. Original worn quarter morocco with new marbled paper. Owner’s signature on front endpaper. Minute traces of old worming and small brown ink to titlepage.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809), became a supernumerary excise officer at Thetford (his native place) in 1761. He was dismissed from that post after printing and distributing to Members of Parliament a statement of excise men’s grievances for improved conditions and pay. He sailed for America, with an introduction from Franklin, and published in 1776 his pamphlet Common Sense, a history of the events leading up to the war with England, which made him famous. He became totally dedicated to an invention for an iron bridge, and in 1786 sailed for Europe to promote his idea. Four years later in London, the first part of his Rights of Man, was published, in reply to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution. With the appearance of the second part in 1792 Paine was compelled to flee to France to avoid prosecution, the book having become a manifesto in sympathy with the French Revolution.

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