WRITER

Thomas Paine

1737 - 1809

Photo of Thomas Paine

Icon of person Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736] – June 8, 1809) was an English-born American Founding Father, French Revolutionary, inventor, and political philosopher. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), two of the most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he helped to inspire the colonial era patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Thomas Paine has received more than 7,017,331 page views. His biography is available in 86 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 84 in 2019). Thomas Paine is the 503rd most popular writer (down from 449th in 2019), the 353rd most popular biography from United Kingdom (down from 345th in 2019) and the 39th most popular British Writer.

Thomas Paine was an English-American political activist, philosopher, and revolutionary. He was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination."

Memorability Metrics

  • 7.0M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 66.88

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 86

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 4.39

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 6.62

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Common Sense
Monarchy
17763 / 5
American crisis
United States
1776
Dissertation on first-principles of government
Constitutional law
1795
Rights of Man
1791
The Age of Reason
1794
The decline and fall of the English system of finance
Banks and banking
1796

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Thomas Paine ranks 503 out of 7,302. Before him are G. K. Chesterton, Christopher Marlowe, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Henri Barbusse, Gérard de Nerval, and Juan Ramón Jiménez. After him are Baldassare Castiglione, Philip Larkin, Anthony Burgess, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Anaïs Nin, and Robert A. Heinlein.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1737, Thomas Paine ranks 4. Before him are Luigi Galvani, Johann Friedrich Struensee, and Edward Gibbon. After him are Michael Haydn, Marie-Louise O'Murphy, Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Louise of France, Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov, Josef Mysliveček, and Tokugawa Ieharu. Among people deceased in 1809, Thomas Paine ranks 3. Before him are Joseph Haydn, and Jean Lannes. After him are Rama I, Nicolai Abildgaard, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Antoine Charles Louis de Lasalle, Jean-Pierre Blanchard, August Ludwig von Schlözer, Joseph-Marie Vien, Matthew Boulton, and François Laurent d'Arlandes.

Others Born in 1737

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Others Deceased in 1809

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In United Kingdom

Among people born in United Kingdom, Thomas Paine ranks 353 out of 8,785. Before him are William Henry Bragg (1862), G. K. Chesterton (1874), Angela Lansbury (1925), Christopher Marlowe (1564), Alan Bates (1934), and Prince Andrew, Duke of York (1960). After him are Emma Thompson (1959), Richard Wright (1943), Christopher Nolan (1970), Colin Firth (1960), Benny Hill (1924), and Philip Larkin (1922).

Others born in United Kingdom

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Among WRITERS In United Kingdom

Among writers born in United Kingdom, Thomas Paine ranks 39. Before him are John Keats (1795), Graham Greene (1904), John Galsworthy (1867), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828), G. K. Chesterton (1874), and Christopher Marlowe (1564). After him are Philip Larkin (1922), Anthony Burgess (1917), Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849), Harold Pinter (1930), Robert Burns (1759), and George Eliot (1819).

British born Writers

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