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PAINE, Thomas.

Convention Nationale. Opinion de Thomas Payne [sic],

député du département de la Somme, Concernant Le Jugement de Louis XVI, Précédée de sa lettre d'envoi au Président de la Convention; Imprimée par ordre de la Convention Nationale. Paris, de l'Imprimerie Nationale, 1792; [bound with:] — [drop-head title] Convention Nationale. Opinion … Sur l'Affaire de Louis Capet, Adressée au Président de la Convention Nationale; Imprimée par ordre de la Conventional nationale. [No place, no date, but 1793]; [and with:] — The American Crisis.

First Editions of the first two listed works, rare in commerce. No copy of the first work appears in auction records since 1975 and only one copy of the second. The Rights of Man brought Paine enormous popularity in France, and eventually election to the National Convention, the central governing agency of the First Republic. But Paine spoke little or no French and had to rely on a fellow deputy translating for him, and he had not grasped how dramatically the course of the revolution had changed. French adulation turned into anger when Paine opposed the execution of Louis XVI. After a bare majority had voted for death, Paine sought a reprieve by pressing for detention, and subsequent banishment to America, rather than execution (with Bancal reading a translation of his speech). Marat shouted him down on the grounds that he was a Quaker, and further interruptions by Marat and Thuriot challenged the accuracy of the translation being read and wrecked any chance of his plea finding support. In December 1793 he was arrested. Robespierre himself wrote out the order of execution, but Paine escaped this fate through an error of his captors and was released from prison the next year after the end of the Terror. The third work in this Sammelband was reprinted by the radical publisher Richard Carlile, who popularized the writings of Tom Paine to the next generation, adding a biography, The Life of Thomas Paine (1820). Carlile was the subject of several prosecutions in 1819; during one trial he famously read aloud The Age of Reason under the justification that the jury would have to judge whether it was blasphemous, an action which allowed him to republish the work under privilege of court (10,000 twopenny copies were subsequently sold). He was found guilty on two charges and sentenced to six years in Dorchester prison.

3 works bound together in one volume, pp. 8; 10; [ii], 196; the first two works small octavo (approx. 195 × 122 mm), the third, with uncut edges, taller octavo (226 × 138 mm). Later mottled half calf, spine lettered gilt, marbled sides. A2 and A3 misbound out of order in first work. Excellent copies.

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