Oops, I guess you're right about that. I took the expression "nary a penny more" to mean "nary a penny more [than 1000 talers]", since I assumed that Vieweg sti

Oops, I guess you're right about that. I took the expression "nary a penny more" to mean "nary a penny more [than 1000 talers]", since I assumed that Vieweg still bought the manuscript. I see now that this isn't explicit at all. But Moldovanu & Tietzel (1998) [0] do report in their article that "Vieweg offered exactly that sum [1000 thalers]". So there it is! [0]: https://www.econ2.uni-bonn.de/pdf/papers/goethes_second.pdf https://www.econ2.uni-bonn.de/pdf/papers/goethes_second.pdf