Life and Writings of Thomas Paine. Containing a Biography by Thomas Clio Rickman and Appreciations by Leslie Stephen, Lord Erskine, Paul Desjardins, Robert G. Ingersoll, Elbert Hubbard and Marilla M. Ricker - Thomas Paine, Daniel Edwin Wheeler (editor) 1908 - Vincent Parke and Company, New York - Independence Edition of the Centenary Issue These are the times that try men's souls

Elegantly bound ten volume set of the de luxe independence edition, number 166 of just 500 hand-numbered sets signed by the editor Daniel Edwin Wheeler, published to celebrate the centenary of Paine's death.

Included are Paine’s ‘
Common Sense’, ‘The American Crises’, ‘The Rights of Man’, and ‘The Age of Reason’, as well as essays, letters and speeches. Each volume with three photogravure or facsimile plates, as well as a frontispiece, title-pages printed in two colours, autographed limitation leaf to volume one.

‘On January 10, 1776, an obscure immigrant published a small pamphlet that ignited independence in America and shifted the political landscape of the patriot movement from reform within the British imperial system to independence from it. One hundred twenty thousand copies sold in the first three months in a nation of three million people, making
Common Sense the best-selling printed work by a single author in American history up to that time. Never before had a personally written work appealed to all classes of colonists. Never before had a pamphlet been written in an inspiring style so accessible to the “common” folk of America.’ - Jack Miller Center.
  ‘Thomas Paine (1737-1809), professional revolutionary, was one of the first to use media as a powerful weapon against an entrenched array of monarchies, feudal lords, dictators, and repressive social structures. He invented contemporary political journalism, creating almost by himself a mass reading-public aware for the first time of its right to encounter controversial opinions and to participate in politics.

If the old media (newspapers, magazines, radio, and television) have abandoned their father, the new media (computers, cable, and the Internet) can and should adopt him. If the press has lost contact with its spiritual and ideological roots, the new media culture can claim them as its own.

For Paine does have a legacy, a place where his values prosper and are validated millions of times a day: the Internet. There, his ideas about communications, media ethics, the universal connections between people, and the free flow of honest opinion are all relevant again’ - Jon Katz,
Wired Magazine.

References:
Printing and the Mind of Man, 241.

Ten octavo volumes (binding size 23.1x16.2cm).
  Finely bound in recent three-quarter half morocco over matching cloth, spines with raised bands, gilt lettering and decoration, top edges gilt, others untrimmed.   Condition: Fine in fine bindings   Ref: 110941   Price: HK$ 35,000