# Is "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Common Sense by Thomas Paine (R. Bell, Philadelphia, 1776) is identified by: Published anonymously, octavo, "Philadelphia: Printed, and Sold, by R. Philadelphia is the true first - there is no earlier London or foreign edition, and the census claim that Bell's anonymous Philadelphia printing of 10 January 1776 is the true first is confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Published anonymously, octavo, "Philadelphia: Printed, and Sold, by R. Bell, in Third-Street
- MDCCLXXVI" - advertised in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on 9 January 1776 and issued on 10 January 1776 as a the printed price pamphlet in an edition of 1,000 copies
- Identification is decided entirely by Richard Gimbel's internal points (Gimbel, A Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense, Yale, 1956): auction houses will only call a copy a first printing when it conforms to all of them, and the two most-cited are that p
- 63, line 13 ends with the words "pedling politi-", and that the title leaf exists in two states - in the first, line 12 of the title ends "some mis-"; in the second it ends "some"
- Sophisticated copies are the norm rather than the exception: the pamphlet was issued stitched, and the fragile outer leaves (the title-and-preface gathering [A]2 and leaf K1) are routinely supplied from a third-edition copy, so the stab-holes and those specific leaves must be checked against the rest of the sheets
- Sotheby's records only about seventeen complete first editions, with two in private hands
- Publisher imprint reads R. Bell, Philadelphia

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Thomas Paine |
| Publisher | R. Bell, Philadelphia |
| Year | 1776 |
| True first | British edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Published anonymously, octavo, "Philadelphia: Printed, and Sold, by R. Bell, in Third-Street |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Published anonymously, octavo, "Philadelphia: Printed, and Sold, by R. Bell, in Third-Street. MDCCLXXVI" - advertised in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on 9 January 1776 and issued on 10 January 1776 as a the printed price pamphlet in an edition of 1,000 copies. Identification is decided entirely by Richard Gimbel's internal points (Gimbel, A Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense, Yale, 1956): auction houses will only call a copy a first printing when it conforms to all of them, and the two most-cited are that p. 63, line 13 ends with the words "pedling politi-", and that the title leaf exists in two states - in the first, line 12 of the title ends "some mis-"; in the second it ends "some". Sophisticated copies are the norm rather than the exception: the pamphlet was issued stitched, and the fragile outer leaves (the title-and-preface gathering [A]2 and leaf K1) are routinely supplied from a third-edition copy, so the stab-holes and those specific leaves must be checked against the rest of the sheets. Sotheby's records only about seventeen complete first editions, with two in private hands. References: Gimbel CS-1; Evans 14954; Adams, American Independence 222a; Church 1135; Grolier American 14; Hildeburn 3433; Howes P17; Sabin 58211; Streeter, American Beginnings 43.

## Is this the true first?
Philadelphia is the true first - there is no earlier London or foreign edition, and the census claim that Bell's anonymous Philadelphia printing of 10 January 1776 is the true first is confirmed. The traps are all downstream and all dated 1776. Bell's own unauthorised "second edition" of 27 January 1776 is largely the same setting: the compositor simply reset the first line, dropping the dateline and substituting "The Second Edition" in a larger font - so a copy can look like first-edition sheets and not be one. The genuinely enlarged edition is Bradford's, advertised 14 February 1776 (Gimbel CS-12; Evans 14959), which adds Paine's Appendix and his "Address to the People called Quakers" and is the third edition overall, not a first. Separately, "Large Additions to Common Sense" (Bell, 1776) is Bell's own compilation gathered from various sources - it is not by Paine and is often bound in at the end of first-edition sheets. Dozens of further 1776 colonial and British reprints follow, the earliest outside Philadelphia apparently New York: John Anderson, 15 February 1776 (Gimbel CS-40; Evans 14956).

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue exists for a 1776 pamphlet. The reprint tells are imprint and setting: the first is Bell's Philadelphia imprint conforming to Gimbel CS-1. Everything else - Bell's "Second Edition," the Bradford enlarged edition, the Anderson New York reprint, the London reprints, and the endless modern facsimiles and reading editions - is a separate edition. Any copy naming Paine as author on the title is not the first, which is anonymous.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Common Sense* by Thomas Paine a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/common-sense
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.