Add to ORKGPrevious research on the history of accounting has concentrated mainly on two sources of material : treatises on accounting, in particular, texts on double-entry bookkeeping, and extant accounting and business records. Much less has been written on the less technical and more social aspects of the history of accounting. The aim of this article is to consider a somewhat different and potentially rich source of material. It looks at just one eighteenth century literary source and shows that study of similar works can set the early development of accounting into its social context. The source is not totally new to students of accounting history, since at least two eminent accounting historians have quoted from it
