“IT WAS THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION THAT MADE ME AN AUTHOR”: PAINE’S LETTERS TO THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1817

PAINE, Thomas. Letters to the Citizens of the United States of America after an Absence of Fifteen Years. London: W.T. Sherwin, 1817. Slim octavo, disbound; pp. (3)-34. $750.

Second English edition of the collection of Paine’s anti-Federalist letters, with all eight in a correspondence that raised tensions between Jefferson and Adams.

Soon after returning to America in 1802, Paine began a series of "letters" to the National Intelligencer, Washington mouthpiece for Jefferson Republicans. Strongly anti-Federalist and supportive of Jeffersonian principles, Paine called leaders of the previous Adams administration shallow and consummately vain, "likening them to various animals, then to mindless vegetables." Paine's Letters created a new tension between Jeffersonians and the Federalists: "You can have no idea of the agitation which my arrival occasioned… every newspaper was filled with applause or abuse" (Fruchtman, 397). From then on, "Adams and Jefferson were seldom to be perceived as anything other than archrivals" (McCullough, John Adams, 433). Letters V-VII contain Paine's correspondence with Samuel Adams concerning the religious stance of Age of Reason. Preceded by 1804 English edition and 1802 American edition. Gimbel-Paine, 83. Sabin 58231. Howes P29. See Gimbel-Yale 133.

Title page and first few leaves foxed. A very good copy.