The rise of the professional author is perhaps the most neglected topic
in the history of the book trade; the author, the fountainhead of the trade,
has been ignored by historians both of publishing and, in his capacity as
paid worker, of literature. This is especially true of the eighteenth century;
A. S. Collins's pioneering studies have not yet been bettered, partly because
so little research has been undertaken.[1] More recent general studies, based
almost
entirely on materials known to Collins, have been at best cursory[2] or misleading,[3]
and at worst inaccurate;[4] all, moreover, have tended to treat
the
eighteenth century as a mere prelude to the great age of the periodical and
the popular novel. Yet all these scholars agree that it was in the eighteenth
century that authorship, for the first time, became a viable profession for
a substantial number
of practitioners. It is only through the study of individual authors and
publishers that we can begin to understand how this happened, and what the
rewards of authorship actually were, especially for those who wrote at the
lower levels of literature, the so-called 'hacks'. Many literary biographers
attempt to assess their subjects' earnings, but only one scholar has offered
a detailed analysis of a major author's finances,[5] and there is only one general
history of
eighteenth-century authorship which has attempted a scholarly
synthesis.[6] This paper, based on the
agreements, accounts, and correspondence of John Nourse, is intended to
go some way towards filling the gap;[7] it is a study of one publisher's
dealings
with a group of authors, offered as an attempt to establish a context for the
more familiar literary copyright agreements, and to show how the trade
dealt with authors of no
great fame or merit.
John Nourse was known in his own day as a publisher and importer
of
French books, and of scientific works, which some of these agreements
reflect, and also as bookseller to George III; when he died in 1780 he had
been in the trade for about half a century, and had established a good
reputation both with the public and with his fellow booksellers.
[8] Like most of his contemporaries
he was
a retail bookseller as well as a publisher, although he was one of those
whose publishing activities overshadowed his retailing, and who led the way
towards the emergence of the publisher in the modern sense. These
agreements suggest that he was not ungenerous to some of his authors, and
his interest in the plight of the professional author, a matter of concern to
any professional publisher, is further attested by his acting as one of the
booksellers for the Society for the Encouragement of Learning between
1735 and 1749.
[9]
In considering the agreements, we have to distinguish between various
categories: firstly, Nourse purchased copyrights, both of books which he
commissioned, and of unsolicited works, in both cases on differing terms;
secondly, he secured various rights in the future publication of an author's
books. Fortunately, enough documents survive for us to construct a
wideranging picture of his dealings with authors, and to draw some
conclusions about their income and his profits. These matters occupy Part
I of this paper; in Part II, I have attempted to provide a context in which
the Nourse documents can be compared with other, and more familiar,
records.
