Traditional accounts of the history of patronage of literary production in the eighteenth century describe an arrangement in which wealthy noblemen supported the endeavours of inspired writers. Jeremiah Joyce's involvement in the Society for Constitutional Information, which sponsored the distribution of politically radical material, was a form of patronage and he was therefore, in this sense, himself a patron to Tom Paine and his influential Rights of Man. As schooling increased through 1800-1816, educational materials for use in schools became a more and more important source of income for educational publishers. Joyce was writing at a time when many educational authors compiled rather than composed and wrote on very different subjects. The romantic model of creativity and originality is linked to the notion of the ownership of ideas and poses some difficult questions in respect to Joyce's works which, in large measure, contain other writers' ideas.