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APPENDIX B
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL'S CURIOUS
HERBAL
The transactions with Elizabeth Blackwell for the distribution of her A Curious Herbal, published in 1737, are unique in the extant documents. The authoress and her husband had had the book printed at their own expense, a very costly undertaking, since it is in two folio volumes and has 625 engraved plates, which, in some copies, are hand-colored; there is no letterpress. The Blackwells were in financial difficulties even before this project started, and they soon become worse. Their first bookseller was Samuel Harding, whose name appears in the imprint of some copies of both volumes; they subsequently approached Nourse, perhaps because he was better able to distribute and advertise the book, or perhaps because they felt that he would be willing to invest in it. On 28 September 1737, three months after publication, Nourse paid £150.os.od. for a ⅓-share, which entitled him to a ⅓-share of the profits, and gave him ownership of ⅓ of the text plates. As a guarantee to him, he was to take possession of his share of the plates, and was granted the right to a ⅓-share in any future work by Mrs. Blackwell on the same subject. These guarantees are so like security against a loan that the transaction has to be seen in that light rather than as normal trading in shares in copies.
In February 1739 the Blackwells needed money again, perhaps to settle the printer's bills, and they arrived at a further agreement with Nourse in which he was able to protect his earlier investment. He paid £319.4s.6d. for the sole rights in the book. He was given all remaining unsold copies, and the rights in all future editions. Of the unsold copies, however, only ⅓ were for his profit; this was his fee for marketing the other ⅔ of which the profits went to the Blackwells. When his expenses were covered, however, any remaining part of the Blackwells' ⅔ was to be returned to them for their own use and profit. This in fact never happened.
At this point, the title-leaves of both volumes were cancelled, and cancellantes printed dated 1739, and with Nourse's name instead of Harding's in the imprint; there are, however, some mixed sets, including one in the British Library, London (34. i. 12.-13.), and one in the library of the Royal Society of Medicine, London. The book was reissued, with further cancellantes, in 1751, but was never reprinted. For full details of the complex bibliographical history of A Curious Herbal, see Blanche Henrey, British Botanical and Horticultural Literature Before 1800 (1976), II, 228-234, and III, 9-10. I am indebted to Mr J. F. Fuggles of the British Library for his help with this matter.
In October 1740 the Blackwells sold Nourse a further ⅙-share in the copyright for £75.0s.0d., and in 1747 he bought the ½-share which they still owned for a mere £20.0s.0d.; at that time they owed Nourse £108.13s.0d., for expenses incurred on their behalf in marketing and coloring the book. In effect he acted as their wholesaler, but the book was so expensive, and sold so slowly, that they were obliged to sell it to him because they could not sustain their expenses.
There are no other transactions of this kind in the extant documents, but this case, although apparently unique in Nourse's business, is of great interest in illustrating the difficulties inherent in publishing an expensive book for which no commercial publisher could be found, and which, even though sold in weekly parts, attracted few subscribers (R. M. Wiles, Serial Publication in England before 1750 (1957), p. 312).
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