The Thomas Paine Project
The Thomas Paine Project
The Thomas Paine Project is concerned with the great transformation of political thought and politics in the years from Paine’s movement to Lewes, East Sussex in 1768 to the end of his involvement in the North American Revolution and the French Revolution. The project seeks to promote research into the life and writings of Thomas Paine and his contemporaries. It equally seeks to disseminate knowledge of Paine and his times among school children and adult learners in Sussex and beyond.
The Thomas Paine Project has three initial aims. The first is to put online manuscripts and printed material concerned with Paine’s life and thought in Lewes in the late 1760s and beyond. The second is to make available teaching material for the study of Paine and his era. The third is to establish a permanent visitor centre devoted to Paine.
The Thomas Paine Project is linked to the broader activities of the Sussex Centre for Intellectual History, including public lectures and events to promote research into the intellectual world of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and making available online manuscript and printed sources of interest to scholars and to the general public.
The Thomas Paine Project is being taken forward with help from the Thomas Paine Society UK, Brewers Decorating Material, The Daughters of the American Revolution: Walter Page Hines Chapter London, Lewes District Council and Lewes Priory School.
The project was inspired by the success of the Lewes festival 'Thomas Paine in Lewes: Revolution and Reason', which ran from the 4th to the 14th of July 2009.
The banner image above shows a detail from A panoramic view of Lewes, Sussex from the south-east 1768, by Dominic Serres,RA 1719-1793 London. Courtesy of Firle Place Preservation Trust.
