Life of Thomas Paine / Written Purposely to Bind with His Writings

A concise biography traces his modest origins and limited early schooling, early trades and brief seafaring, followed by successive posts as a staymaker, excise officer, and school usher while he pursued self-education in mathematics and astronomy; these studies fostered his literary gifts and led to early printed pieces and advocacy for excise officers. It recounts two marriages that produced no surviving children, his emigration to America after encouragement from a prominent correspondent, his rise as a political pamphleteer—most notably a call for independence—and his later controversial political and theological writings, aiming to present a measured, unvarnished portrait of life and work.