M & S Rare Books

Document Information
Our descriptions are copyrighted, and may not be reproduced without permission. (title 17, U. S. Code).

Carlile Carries On

 

PAINE, THOMAS. Rights of Man; Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution. Part I [and] Rights of Man, Part the Second; Combining Principle and Practice. London: Printed and Published by R. Carlile; London: W.T. Sherwin , 1819. 8vo. 112; 118, 4. Contemp. plain boards, rebacked with paper. Uncut. Inner margin of first title crudely reinforced. $375.00

 

The two parts first published separately, and suppressed in 1791 and 1792. The second part was a much stronger call for a change in the form of government in England, and Paine was brought to trial in 1792 for it--which probably accounts for the change of publisher in the current edition, no doubt much complicated by governmental censorship of Carlile's 1818 publication of Age of Reason. As Ralph McCoy wrote in his annotated bibliography Freedom of the Press::

"In 1818 Carlile challenged the government censors with the publication of Paine's Age of Reason, a work twice before condemned by the courts. To assure arrest, he advertised the publication widely. At the instigation of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, Carlile was arrested and brought to trial....After long delays Carlile was tried for blasphemy and found guilty both for publishing Age of Reason and, in a second trial, for Principles of Nature [by Elihu Palmer]....Wickwar, in his comprehensive account of the Carlile case, stated that blasphemy was at the time considered more offensive to the average man than sedition...Carlile went to jail for six years; his wife was given a two-year sentence, and his sister a similar penalty..." Hence, a secondary publisher for the second volume.