Start Here
The Conway Edition runs to four volumes. If you've never read Paine, here are five short pieces in the order I'd recommend — a weekend's reading.
- 1
Begin with the eulogy.
It is a graveside speech, and the most beautiful piece of English prose he ever delivered. Read it first, before you have any opinion of him at all, so the man's voice can register before any argument arrives.
- 2
Hear his manifesto.
Late-career, autobiographical, in his own words: how he arrived at his settled position. The clearest single statement of where he stood and why.
- 3
Watch him on the stump.
The lecture that made him famous. He surveys the world's pantheons and asks what an honest god would look like. The original 1872 performance is still the better introduction than any biography.
- 4
See him as a moralist.
His most popular lecture, the one women lined up to hear and clergymen lined up to denounce. Domestic tyranny, child-rearing, marriage; a century of social progress in one evening.
- 5
Walk away with the prose.
A short funeral address. Pair it with a few of his prose poems in Fragments. By now, the voice is yours; the rest of the canon will read in his cadence.
Once you've finished these five, the canon opens up. Try a themed reading plan, or pick a volume you're curious about and follow the threads.