B. The Purchase of Rights
In some instances, it is not clear exactly what it was that Nourse
bought. In 1760, for example, he paid Palairet £21.1os.od. for the
rights in Nouvelle introduction à la géographie
moderne,
published in 3 volumes in 1754 and 1755; the plates were included in the
sale, which suggests that Nourse envisaged publishing another edition,
although he does not seem to have done so. Another ambiguous agreement
with the same author is that for A Short Treatise upon Arts and
Sciences, dated 16 May 1738; Nourse paid £10.10.od. for the
sole rights in the copy. It is possible, however, that the book was already
in print, for the first extant edition, that of 1741, is the third. These
ambiguities lead us to consider the second major category of Nourse's
dealings: his purchases of whole or part shares in existing, forthcoming, or
future editions, especially the latter.
1. Future Editions
We have already seen some examples of Nourse explicitly purchasing
the right to publish future editions of a work; additionally, this right was
implicit in any agreement for the outright purchase of a copy, as was the
case with commissioned works. There are, however, some agreements in
which he deviated from his standard practices.
An Essay towards a Practical English Grammar, and
The Royal English Grammar, which was an abridged version
of the same work, were both purchased by Nourse from their author, James
Greenwood, in 1736. Nourse paid Greenwood £42.1os.od. for the rights
to any and all future editions. In fact, he made little profit from this; his
first edition was the fourth of 1740, which was still in print in 1753 when
it was advertised in volume 1 of Le Prince de Beaumont's Education
complète. That work was itself published under an
agreement
which gave Nourse unlimited rights to reprint without payment, in return
for which he gave the author 150 copies of the first edition, and no
cash.
Not all of these agreements, however, were as unfavorable to the
author as that with Le Prince de Beaumont; indeed there are some in which
Nourse was very generous. William Lewis was a notable beneficiary.
Nourse paid him £105.os.od. for The New English
Dispensatory, published in 1753, six years after the agreement was
signed. In addition, Lewis received 100 free copies, and had the right to
revise future editions if he wished to do so; even if he did not wish to
revise the work himself, he still retained control over its contents for he
was permitted to see any revisions which were made by others, and no
revised edition was to appear without his consent. The second
edition appeared, with the author's revisions, in 1765; for his work, Lewis
received £52.1os.od. and 100 copies. There were three further
revisions, in 1770, 1781, and 1785, for which no documentation has
survived. For 'a New practice of Physick' Lewis was to be paid
£105.os.od. for two volumes, 8°, and then £31.1os.od. for the
second edition, and £21.os.od. for each of the third and fourth; it was
further specified that no edition should exceed 1,000 copies. Such contracts
as this were at least as favorable to the author as they were to the
publisher.
Lewis was not the only author with whom Nourse made agreements
for future payments. When Greenwood sold his two grammatical works to
Nourse, one clause in the contract granted him a further £10.1os.od. if
more than 1,000 copies were sold, although, as we have seen, this clause
probably never took effect. An edition size of 1,000 seems to have been the
norm upon which Nourse based his contractual arrangements. For
The
Elements of Navigation, published in 1754, John Robertson received
£96.12s.od., and 12 copies of the book, for 43 sheets, 8°; Nourse
had the rights in all future editions, but for each of them, none of which
was to exceed 1,000 copies, Robertson was to receive £24.13s.od., and
12 copies. This author, unlike Greenwood, profited from the arrangement;
there were further editions of his book in 1764, 1772, 1780, and 1796.
Indeed, he actually received more than the contract envisaged, for Nourse
paid him £16.16s.od. for eight extra sheets for the
1764 edition, and raised the fee for subsequent editions to
£28.7s.od..
Specified payments for revisions appear elsewhere. For his
Thesaurus ellipsium Latinarum, Palairet was paid
£1.1s.od.
per sheet, but was to have 10s.6d. per sheet for revising any future edition.
Le Prince de Beaumont, on the other hand, had no commitment to Nourse
for one form of revision of her Magasin pour servir à
l'instruction
des jeunes personnes; Nourse was entitled to arrange for an English
translation if he so wished, but the author was free to write and publish a
version suitable for Roman Catholics, a right easily ceded by Nourse since
the market for such a version would be chiefly outside England.
2. Joint Publications
Nourse did not always undertake the whole risk of an edition himself.
Barlow's Justice of the Peace was originally to have been a
joint
publication between Nourse and Francis Coggan, but in 1742, 9 years after
the original agreement was signed, Coggan sold his ½-share to Nourse.
No further documents survive, but it seems that Nourse re-sold this share
to John and Paul Knapton, for their names appear with his in the imprint
of the edition published in 1745. Coggan was also joint owner of Shaw's
Parish Law; Deletanville's Dictionary was a
joint
venture with Paul Vaillant; and Lewis's New Dispensatory
started as a joint publication with Thomas Longman, although only
Nourse's name appears in the imprint. In addition to these, one book,
Robert Dossie's Memoirs of Agriculture, was sponsored, and
may have been
subsidised, by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures,
and Commerce; and Abraham Le Moine sold only half the rights in his
Treatise on Miracles, and took half the profits, an
arrangement
which was to apply to all subsequent editions.
