Gregory Claeys is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri.

• Acknowledgements -- Chronology -- Introduction The age of Paine -- The problem of Thomas Paine -- British radical traditions, 1688-1789 -- Natural rights and natural law -- The emergence of the reform movement -- 1 'Apostle of liberty': the life of Thomas Paine -- 2 'The cause of all mankind': Paine and the American revolution -- Colonial radicalism, 1765-76 -- Independence sounded: Common Sense (1776) -- Interpreting Common Sense -- The Tories respond -- Paine at war: The American Crisis (1776-83) -- American independence as a democratic revolution -- 3 Republicanism contested: Burke's Reflections (1790) and the Rights of Man (1791-92) -- Radicalism and Dissent, 1788-90 -- The 'manifesto of a counter-revolution': Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) -- Early responses to Burke (1790-92) -- Exporting America: the Rights of Man. Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution (February 1791) -- Towards social justice: the Rights of Man, Part Second. Combining Principle and Practice (1792) -- 4 Paine's achievement -- Constitutionalism, conventions and republicanism -- Natural rights and natural law -- Commerce, wealth and equality -- Quakerism and the millennium -- Paine's language and appeal -- 5 A great awakening: the birth of the Revolutionary Party -- 'The whiskey of infidelity and treason': the Rights of Man and popular politics -- How Paine was read -- 'All change at Hounslow': middle-class radicalism and the Painites -- Critics from the left -- 6 Inequality vindicated: the government party -- Painophobia unleashed: governmental and loyalist reaction -- Scurrilous abuse -- Arguments against the Rights of Man: property and civilization -- Natural rights and the state of nature -- The Painite counterattack -- Religion and revolution -- 7 Revolution in heaven: The Age of Reason (1794-95) -- Introduction -- Deism in the eighteenth century -- The Age of Reason -- The reception of The Age of Reason -- Conclusion -- 8 Revolution in civilization: Agrarian Justice (1797) -- Agrarian Justice: natural jurisprudence secularized -- Deism and the Creation -- The reception of Agrarian Justice -- Conclusion Political saint: the legend of Thomas Paine -- Paine's reputation -- The emergence of social radicalism -- The modernity of Thomas Paine -- Bibliography -- Index