Thomas Paine,
Common Sense
(London: John Almon, 1776).

Called the "spark of the Revolution," Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet mobilized American colonial support for the war with Britain like no other writing, selling perhaps 500,000 copies in America and Europe in its first year. Paine rejected monarchy and nobility entirely, calling for independence, a republic, and a national constitution for the new states. These were no fine legal arguments, but trenchant attacks and reasoned thrusts that cut to the quick.

In London, the work would provoke outcry and condemnation by the government. Sympathetic to the American cause and critical of King George III, printer John Almon had already printed a banned letter of Junius, been fined, and involved himself in the scandal of printing verbatim Parliamentary debates. Almon also published the Remembrancer, a monthly publication on the events of the American Revolution. In June 1776, five months after its American debut, Almon brought out the first British edition of Common Sense in an expurgated text, to avoid charges of libel against the king. The blank spaces left in the text make an immediate visual impact, indicating Paine's most direct barbs. We have filled in some of the censored text below in red.