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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
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
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