In 1964, there was political opposition to the erection of Paine’s statue outside King’s House in Thetford, UK which was a gift from the American Thomas Paine Foundation. The controversy led to the foundation of the Thomas Paine Society UK with a goal of promoting a better understanding of the man and his work. The Thomas Paine Society UK became the premier Thomas Paine historical society in the UK. In 2025, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association merged with the Thomas Paine Society UK to form the internationally-focused Thomas Paine Historical Association. This is the archive of the Thomas Paine Society UK Bulletin from 1965 to 2013.
Following her excellent biographical study of Thomas Paine, Audrey Williamson has now given us one on another radical reformer, John Wilkes. Unlike Paine, Wilkes has been the central subject of many a learned book and article.
Paine’s project was more appreciative of the potentialities of iron than either the Coaibrookdale Iron Bridge, based as it was on principles of wood construction, or Burden’s bridge, which, it was agreed by all observers, was based on the principles of stone construction.
This book reprints the pamphlets on Hardie, Paine, Burns (John not Robert), Lovett, Place, Owen and the Webbs, and so has particular value to students of Paine. It is, though, a great pity that the essays on Carlile and Cobbett could not have been included.
Of all the radical writers who knew Thomas Paine, the one whose work is among the least known or read today, but whose career was the most Varied and Striking, was Thomas Holcroft: Newmarket stableboy, schoolmaster, actor, playwright, novelist.
There can be no doubt that Paine’s ideas in the 1790’s had profound effects upon political thinking among Irish radicals, just as they did among the revolutionaries of France, the United States, and Britain. Both he and Wolfe Tone met in Paris in 1797 and during the “dragooning” of Ulster.
In 1805, Thomas Paine addressed a tract to the Board of Health of the United States entitled “Of the Cause of the Yellow Fever; And the Means of Preventing it” in places not yet effected with it. In 1807, Clio Rickman printed and published this tract in London.
No one illustrates a form of committing political suicide better than Thomas Paine. He did not hesitate a moment to rush in to promote every good cause and to expose every injustice, and he ended up being generally despised, with virtually everyone his enemy for one reason or another.
Richard Gimbel was a Colonel in the United States Army Air Force, so you would expect that. But he had another kind of bravery, too moral, which he particularly showed in the United States during the “Cold War.”
Volney was the author of a great many works but it is beyond question that his most influential was “The Ruins”. It first appeared in France in 1791 (the year that saw Part 1 of Paine’s Rights of Man appear), and soon ran through several editions.
C.F. Volney, The Forgotten Revolutionary And Scientist Read Post »
BEFORE HIS “CONVERSION” to a pro-Paineite position, William Cobbett made several bitter attacks on Paine and his ideas. Following his “change of heart” Cobbett found his anti-Paine material being used against him.
Both of the studies reviewed heroes I found very interesting and they are no doubt of considerable value. Hamburger’s study lends itself to consistent arguementatIon, far more easily than does that of Miss Hollis’s and therefore I suppose one is inclined to consider it the more readable.
BOOK REVIEW: A Study in Working Class Radicalism in the 1830s Read Post »
“America and Its People” is the type of book one finds easy to read, in fact it is of a type not easy to lay down once started. The only criticism I level at it is that it is too short – for my liking. Paine features large in it.
