ABSTRACT
Paine was referring specifically to some of the textual errors that had crept into pirated American editions of the first part of The Age of Reason, but his complaint could be more generally applied to a number of literary forgeries that 'ventriloquised' him; counterfeiting his voice to promote the agendas of the real authors. Paine's Deism was not necessarily a liability, but a useful asset for critiquing traditional Christian belief and for promoting a Spiritualist cosmology. While Donald Fraser's The Recantation is the best literary example of Paine being ventriloquised in order to return him to the Christian fold, the notion that Paine actually did reject Deism would play-out upon his death in 1809. Paine serves as the ultimate Spiritualist convert and Hammond ventriloquises him to establish the validity of Spiritualism's methods and messages, while also striking a blow at its skeptics and critics.
