Thomas Paine

Ingersoll, Robert Green, 1833-1899Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 50K words
Chapters: 6

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Thomas Paine by Robert Green IngersollAuthor: Ingersoll, Robert Green, 1833-1899,Language: English, Class: JC: Political science: Political theory, Release Date: Nov 22, 2011

Editor's review

This book is a biographical lecture by the 19th-century American orator Robert Green Ingersoll on Thomas Paine—concise, strongly opinionated, and emotionally charged. Writing as an orator, Ingersoll defends Paine, highlighting the Enlightenment spirit and political courage displayed in works such as Common Sense and Rights of Man, while responding to the misconceptions and slanders surrounding Paine at the time. Its value lies not in a scholarly biography with exhaustive sources but in a public speech text bearing a strong personal style: it shows how 19th-century American freethinkers shaped Paine's image and used a historical figure to discuss church-state relations and freedom of speech. It suits readers interested in Paine's life, Enlightenment political thought, or the American tradition of public oratory, and is best appreciated after acquiring basic background knowledge, so as to savor its polemical edge. Because the text is clearly defensive in tone, readers should pair it with other biographies or Paine's own works, enjoying its rhetorical power while maintaining a cautious judgment of facts and evaluations.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in Thomas Paine's life and Enlightenment political thought
Those studying 19th-century American public oratory and the freethought tradition
Readers who wish to approach the evolution of Paine's image through a defensive text
Readers with English reading ability who prefer short lecture-style texts

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking a scholarly biography with exhaustive sources and detailed notes
Beginners who want a systematic understanding of all Paine's works and their historical context
Readers who reject a strongly defensive stance and prefer neutral narrative

Reading tips

Read the key points of Paine's Common Sense first, then this book, to identify the author's defensive emphases.
Read the lecture alongside other contemporary evaluations of Paine, noting differences in stance.
Read aloud in sections to feel the rhythm and rhetorical strategies of 19th-century public oratory.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a complete biography of Paine?

No. It is an evaluative lecture by Ingersoll, focused on defending Paine and assessing his intellectual contributions rather than detailing his life chronologically. For a complete biography, consult a scholarly work alongside this text.

What background should I have before reading?

It helps to first know Paine's basic experiences in the American Revolution and the French Revolution, as well as the main arguments of Common Sense and Rights of Man. With this background, you can better understand why Ingersoll defends Paine and what criticisms he is responding to.

Does the text's stance affect its credibility?

The text is clearly defensive and laudatory, belonging to polemical writing rather than neutral history. Readers should distinguish factual statements from value judgments and verify key facts with other sources, rather than treating the lecture as the sole basis.

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About the author

Ingersoll, Robert Green, 1833-1899 Author

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833–1899) was a prominent nineteenth-century American orator and writer, known for his eloquence and his critique of religious orthodoxy. This site holds thirty-two of his works, including lecture collections and collected writings, commonly classified under inspirational growth. Representative titles include Walt Whitman: An Address, the multi-volume Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, and Hell: Warm Words on the Cheerful and Comforting Doctrine of Eternal Damnation. His prose is direct and incisive, using parallel structure and satire to address reason, free thought, and moral questions before ordinary audiences. His speeches were widely influential in his day and remain important sources for studying the American freethought tradition. Because public information is limited, biographical details are omitted; readers may sense his argumentative style and intellectual concerns through these works.