Liberty in Business: The Printing of Common Sense
Liberty in Business: The Printing of Common Sense
Chapter 2 reads a selection of Thomas Paine's political writings—including Common Sense (1776), The American Crisis (1776–83), Letter to the Abbe Raynal (1782), and The Rights of Man (1792)—as a commentary on moral agency in the print trade, including the agency of the printer who issued the first edition of Common Sense, Robert Bell. Paine's belief that the putative deficiency of civility and character among printers would result in a debased and inconsequential American literature was not a unique argument, but its place within his larger critique of political tyranny helps us understand the cultural function of Paine's attack on the business of print: that the trade ignored the “civil manners” that ideally should characterize American civil society.
Keywords: Thomas Paine, Robert Bell, common sense, republicanism, ethics, printing, publishing, authorship
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
