Books partly or wholly devoted to giving instruction in the art of keeping accounts date from 1494 when Luca Pacioli's Summa was published in Venice. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that manuscript expositions of bookkeeping were in existence before then, for use within commercial schools, by individual instructors, or possibly for circulation among those interested in acquiring mercantile knowledge. Several early manuscripts on other aspects of mercantile practice have survived,' but only one which includes some discussion of bookkeeping is known to us, although not in its original form. Manuscripts on bookkeeping continued to be written and presumably used even after the first books on the subject had been published. It may be assumed that these were compiled by their writers for the limited purpose of instructing their own pupils, though no doubt they came to the notice of others. In this article the various manuscripts on mercantile accounts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are described and discussed.2 Its scope

Double-entry bookkeeping, Accounting history

Reviews the book "The Legal Literature of Accounting: On Accounts by Diego del Castillo," translated by Patti A. Mills.

This article examines the discussion and illustration of the ledger index in some early treatises on bookkeeping and accounts, and comments on the economizing of effort and paper in the early practice of bookkeeping.

This article traces references to and illustrations of compound journal entries in accounting or bookkeeping treatises up to Lodovico Flori's Trattato of 1636. It is shown that the practice was referred to, discussed, or illustrated earlier and more frequently than has been supposed.

The fact that the origin of double-entry bookkeeping remains shrouded in mystery does not detract from the merits of the valuable researches into the early history of accounting made by several scholars, as of July 1947. The search provides an interesting pursuit for the historian even if he knows that the spoor will disappear, sooner or later, in a confused tangle of speculation and conjecture, with the scent of red herring always present. The article deals with one of the possible trails to the unknown origin, or rather, a possible trail provides a tenuous central theme about which some observations are presented. It seems as if, before double-entry appeared, accounting records of proprietorships, whether single or multiple, were confined to records of dealings involving the granting or receiving of credit. The records assumed various forms and often the books of account were mere scraps of paper. Sometimes there were entries in diaries or journals, where the settlement of debts was indicated by the effective though untidy method of deletion. Sometimes the entries in the journal were reclassified into accounts, the beginnings of the modern ledger.

In 1796, writer Edward Jones's "The English System of Book-keeping" was published in Bristol. The first edition contains a list of over 4,000 subscribers resident in all parts of Great Britain. The Bank of England and the Honourable East India Company each subscribed for five copies. The author is said to have profited to the extent of 25,000 pounds from his invention. His system is stated to have been widely used in both Great Britain and the U.S. It gained an international reputation in a short while, and is probably the only English work on accounting. The publication of the book was preceded in 1795 by "An Address to Bankers, Merchants, Tradesmen and others, intended as an introduction to a New System of Book-keeping." This address contents reproduced as an Introductory Address in the main work, sets out in the author's compelling style faults, demerits and positive dangers of the existing bookkeeping methods, both by single and double entry, without so much as giving a foretaste of the magnificent new system about to be made known to the long suffering commercial world.