![A 1793 Dalton No. 208 (300] penny labled "Thomas Paine" and described as "an excellent profile, made of white metal". The image can be found in "Thomas Paine Fights for Freedom in Three Worlds: The New, The Old, The Next" by Richard Gimbel - American Antiquarian Society](https://staging.thomaspaine.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-16-225456.png)
Throughout his life, Paine talked about compiling a complete edition of his own works, and it is clear from his correspondence that he always saw this as a signature achievement. He first mentioned it in a 1779 letter to Henry Laurens, a South Carolina politician and then president of the Continental Congress. “I intend this winter to collect all my Publications, beginning with Common Sense and ending with the Fisheries, and publishing them in two Volumes, Octavo, with notes. I have no doubt of a large Subscription.”
Paine needed money and hoped readers were willing to pay for it, but he also understood that his own works, while meritorious on their own, are better understood in the larger context of a history of the Revolution itself. The ultimate purpose was to celebrate revolutionary history as much as his own writing.
After the American Revolution, Paine’s years were filled with building both physical and metaphorical bridges, supporting revolution in France, and planning revolution in England and Ireland. When Paine returned to America in 1802 at Thomas Jefferson’s invitation, he again thought of a collected works. In an 1803 letter to Jefferson, Paine wrote “with what I have in manuscript will make four, or five octavo Volumes, and publish them by subscription.” He did not succeed, but did not abandon the idea.
In 1805, again to Jefferson, Paine, having clearly thought about his collected works project, laid out a clearer scheme: “I judge the Collection I speak of will make five volumes Octavo of four hundred pages each at two dollars a Volume to be paid for on delivery; The three first volumes will be political and each piece will be accompanied with an account of the state of affairs at the time it was written whether in America, France or England which will also shew the occasion of writing it. The two last Volumes will be theological and those who do not chuse to take them may let them alone. They will have the right to do so by the conditions of the subscription. I shall also make a miscellaneous Volume of Correspondence, Essays, and some pieces of Poetry which I believe will have some claim to originality.”