Thomas Paine

  b. 1737; d. 1809 | English political essayist

At The Bottom

— 1774

By the age of 37, Paine had failed to find success at anything.

Thomas Paine had pursued a variety of occupations as a young man.  He had worked as a corset maker, an excise officer, a schoolteacher, and a tobacco shopkeeper.  By the age of 37, Paine had failed to find success at anything.  His first wife and child had died in childbirth, and his second marriage brought him little happiness.  In 1774, he lost his job as an excise inspector and saw his tobacco business collapse.  To evade a sentence to debtors’ prison, Paine sold all his possessions and left for the American colonies.  While in transit, he contracted typhoid fever and arrived in North American too weak to leave the ship under his own power.