By Richard Gimbel

The first edition of Thomas Paine’s controversial work The Age of Reason has long been a bibliographical enigma. There are many contenders for priority, published in French or English and dated either 1794 of “1 An II” of the French Revolutionary Calendar. Francois Lanthenas, Paine’s French translator, complicated the problem when, in his appeal for Paine’s liberation from prison, dated August 5, 1794, he wrote (in French):

This book (The Age of Reason) was written by the author in the beginning of the year ‘93 (old style). I undertook its translation before the revolution against the priests, and it was published in French about the same time. Couthon, to whom I sent it, seemed offended with me for having translated this work. 

Moncure D. Conway, in his authoritative life of Paine, gave this account:

Under the frown of Couthon, one of the most atrocious colleagues of Robespierre, the early translations seems to have been so effectively suppressed that no copy bearing that date, 1793, can be found in France or elsewhere. In Paine’s letter to Samuel Adams, he says that he had it translated into French, “to stay the progress of atheism”. The time indicated to Lanthenas as that in which he submitted the work to Couthon who appear to be in the latter part of March 1793, the fury against the priesthood having reached its climax in degrees against them of March 19 and 26. 

J.M. Querard, in his bibliography of French literature, gives 1793 as the date of the first edition of “L’Age de la raison.”

Although attributed on the title page to Lanthenas, this is indeed a translation of Paine’s The Age of Reason before the addition of several new chapters and the dedication (dated 1794). The year of its publication is not given, but it seems to answer the description of the 1793 edition. A passage referring to the fury against the priests included in editions of 1794 does not appear in this edition, the events apparently not yet having occurred. 

The present copy is unfortunately not complete. The entire signature B (pages 17-32) belongs apparently to another, as yet unidentified pamphlet, and the “Tableau frappant” by Citizen Neez, called for on the title page, is not present. On the other hand, there are at the end four pages of new material entitled “Maximes Republicaines”, consisting of twenty-five unnumbered sayings, very possibly the work of Paine, and not known to have been published elsewhere in French or in English. They are not the “Twenty Five Precepts of Reason”, a catechism by J. Graset St. Sauveur, found on page 189-192 of the first New York (1794) edition of The Age of Reason, printed by T. & J. Swords for J. Fellows. For illustration, one of the new maxims (the thirteenth) reads, in translation:

“There is some shame in being rich and happy in sight of the poor”.