The initial plan to publish the Robert Treat Paine Papers dates back to the 1940s when the Society's director, Allyn Bailey Forbes, began to transcribe documents from this collection with the dedicated assistance of Miss Eleanor Bates. After Mr. Forbes's sudden death in 1947, Stephen T. Riley, the Society's librarian and eventual director, assumed the project on a part-time basis, finding occasional nights and weekends in a very busy schedule to work on the papers. In 1953, as his doctoral dissertation at Clark University, he produced an annotated catalogue of the Paine Family Papers. These papers included a large collection of material which the Paine Family added to the Massachusetts Historical Society's holdings in 1954. Mr. Riley was instrumental in obtaining that donation, and his close personal association with the Paine family over the years served to increase his interest in publishing a selected edition. At the end of 1976, Mr. Riley retired as director of the Society and began a new MHS tradition by moving his office from the second floor to the fourth-floor Tower Room, where he commenced on his many retirement projects and activities.

In 1986 Edward W. Hanson joined the Society's publications department and, among other projects, began to work with Mr. Riley on the long-anticipated publication of the Paine Papers. At this time it was decided to refocus the work by concentrating on the main figure of Robert Treat Paine and to include all aspects of his writings, including his legal correspondence which originally had been excluded in expectation of a single volume on Paine's legal career. A nation-wide search throughout public and private repositories began, although surprisingly few new letters were discovered. The vast bulk of the surviving Paine documents are those in the Robert Treat Paine Papers at MHS. Like Mr. Riley before him, Mr. Hanson was also able turn the Paine Papers to doctoral advantage, in this case a biography of Robert Treat Paine for a dissertation at Boston College in 1992.

Over the course of many years, the editors of The Papers of Robert Treat Paine have become indebted to many individuals for their assistance. Foremost among these are the members of the Paine family, who for several generations have supported this project, through the original dona-tion of the papers and the establishment in 1957 of a publication fund. Mrs. John B. Paine, Mrs. Georgina P. Howland, Miss Charlotte J. Paine, R8 Richard C. Paine, Robert Treat Paine, Rev. George L. Paine, and Mr. and Mrs. John B. Paine, Jr., all contributed their financial support. The late John B. Paine, Jr., longtime friend of the MHS and a personal friend of Mr. Riley, served the Society for many years as its treasurer, and his interest in the historical legacy of Robert Treat Paine was unflagging. In recent years, this interest has been continued by his son Thomas M. Paine, who has become an active and enthusiastic supporter of the project.

For technical assistance, the editors have relied upon the assistance of many area specialists, too many to mention individually but to each of whom we extend our thanks. Special appreciation, however, goes to our classical language experts. Prof. Mason Hammond of Harvard University has been particularly generous in correcting the transcriptions and providing translations for the schoolboy Latin letters and quotations which flowed freely, if roughly, through the early correspondence of Robert Treat Paine and his college classmates. Prof. George Marcopoulos of Tufts University kindly provided the transcriptions and translations of the occasional Greek phrases used in the correspondence.

Current and former members of the MHS staff, particularly the late John D. Cushing, Malcolm Freiberg, Marjorie F. Gutheim, Marc Friedlaender, and Conrad E. Wright, have been very generous with their time and expertise in answering questions and reading transcriptions and annotations over the course of many years. We also appreciate the help from the staffs of many other institutions, especially those who assisted in our search for documents.