Luca Pacioli
1494
This title is the first great work on mathematics to be printed and includes treatises on arithmetic, algebra, geometry, foreign exchange calculations and double-entry bookkeeping - the "Methods of Venice" . It is this last section that eventually, about a hundred years ago; led to its writer becoming well known for having set down the system of accounting which remains in use today.
Luca Pacioli
1509
Fifteen years after Luca Pacioli wrote the first published exposition of double-entry book-keeping as part of his celebrated work on mathematics, the Summa of 1494, he published another equally celebrated work, his De Divina Proportione, in Venice. The Divina Proportione, which deals with what may be called the mathematics of beauty, is in itself a work of beauty.
Heinrich Schreiber
1518
This book was the first dealing with bookkeeping to appear in Germany.
Jan Ympyn Christoffels
1543
Jan Ympyn Christoffels' Nieuwe Instructie (translated into English in 1547 as 'A Notable and Very Excellente Worke') was the first work in Dutch on double-entry bookkeeping and was widely translated.
Gaspar de Texada
1546
This is the earliest known book on bookkeeping from Spain.
Jan Ympyn Christoffels
1547
A facsimile of the earliest book printed in English on double-entry bookkeeping which has survived. Translated by Ympyn from Italian into Dutch, from Dutch into French, and finally from French into English, it originates from an Italian manuscript by one Giovanni Paolo di Bianchi.
Wolffgang Schweicker
1549
This work is a translation of Manzoni's "Quaderno Doppio" from Wolfgang Schweicker, the earliest German author to follow the 'methods of Venice' of Pacioli and Manzoni.
James Peele
1553
James Peele, Citizen and Salter of London, clerk to Christ’s Hospital 1562 to 1585, was the author of the second English work on double-entry bookkeeping to have survived. It was republished in a much enlarged and improved form in 1569.
Hugh Oldcastle, John Mellis
1588
Schoolmaster and teacher of arithmetic in the parish of St Olave's, Southwark, John Mellis claims to have 'enlarged and beautified' Oldcastle's original work of 1543. The examples he added at the end show instances of following Ympyn and Peele rather than Oldcastle and illustrations with the text are also obviously Mellis's work. The overall impression is however that Oldcastle's lost work is fairly faithfully reproduced.
Matthew Hale
1683
This is a long sought first edition and one of the later additions to the collection (a 1716 edition had been purchased for the collection between 1903 and 1913). The accounting section of this work made little impression but the irrelevant part of the book on the trial of witches makes it rather fascinating.
Daniel Defoe
1766
This work, attributed to Daniel Defoe, offered practical help to his contemporaries on the law relating to bankrupts, customary frauds of trade and bookkeeping.
A gentleman of the Inner Temple
1792
An unusual title in the Historical Accounting Literature collection which includes advice for officers on-board His Majesty’s Ships.