Reviewed by Peter H. Knutson The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania

How can a reviewer fail to praise a book which presents debits and credits thus:

The Ower, or the Owing thing Or what-so-ever comes to thee: Upon the Left-hand see thou bring; For there the same must placed bee. But they unto whom thou doest owe; Upon the Right let them bee set; Or what-so-ere doth from thee goe, To place them there doe not forget.

The foregoing verse appears on page 67 of this completely fasci-nating bibliography, which according to the foreword, is the first publication of the Scottish Committee on Accounting History, As such it is an appropriate choice inasmuch as it provides a complete and authoritative guide to the existence and location of the source material upon which further work on Scottish accounting history depends.

As all of us must know, the accounting history of Scotland is a rich one and the prowess of Scottish accountants is near legendary in the English-speaking world. The written record of that heritage begins with the publication in 1683 of Robert Colinson’s ldea Rationaria, or, The Perfect Accomptant, the first listing in this bibli¬ography. From then until 1920, there are listed 192 books (many published in several editions), 83 transcriptions of accounts, plus an entire separate section citing some 48 works on the History of Scottish Accounting. In addition, there is a short (6 pages) essay by R. H. Parker on Robert Colinson’s ldea Rationaria and a variety of addenda and cross reference lists.

The organization of Accounting in Scotland can be only an ac-countant’s creation. A vast number of abbreviations are used and some study of the Table of Contents, Introduction, and List of Abbreviations is absolutely necessary before any efficient use can be made of the volume. In general, the organization is as follows:

Part I — Books Published in Scotland 1683-1920

This is the heart of the work and contains a numbered list of books in the chronological order in which they were published. Each entry states the author, title, place of publication, publisher, date, number of pages, cover size in centimeters, a list of reference works in which it is cited, and a list of English and Scottish libraries in which a copy is known to be located. There are also annotations for almost every item; these range from being brief and matter-of-fact (Item 8: “The author was Secretary to the Bank of Scotland”) to several longer entries which are somewhat more chatty in content and style. There are several pages of reproductions from some of the works cited as well as a series of photographs of some rather for-bidding-looking authors.

Part II — Transcriptions of Accounts

The 83 works cited in this section are also presented in numbered chronological order, starting with “The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland (1264-1600)” and ending with “An Old Day Book” of 1814. The basic data provided are the same as in Part I, but the annotations are briefer and less frequent.

Part Ill — History of Scottish Accounting

The first two of three subsections in this part present (a) a chrono-logical list of 15 books on Scottish Accounting History, the publica¬tion dates of which range from 1920 to 1969, and (b) a chronological list of 18 periodical articles on the same subject, these items dating from 1894 to 1973. The third subsection, (c) Biographies, contains 13 works arranged chronologically by date of death of the subject.

Appendixes

The first appendix is the short but informative essay on Colinson by R. H. Parker that was mentioned earlier. The remaining two ap¬pendixes are (a) an alphabetical author list, and (b) an alphabetical title list. These are keyed back to the main body of the work first by Part number (I, II, or Ill), then for Part Ill for subsection letter (a, b, or c), second by publication date, and third by the number assigned to that work in the main listing. It seems terribly complicated to explain, but in practice it works quite well after a little trial and error on the part of the user.

The major shortcoming of Accounting in Scotland to accounting historians in the United States is that its library references include only the United Kingdom. This is not a complaint, but rather is an observation of a fact which was only to have been expected. Per¬haps when some of the bibliographies currently in progress in this country are completed, that situation can be to some extent im¬proved. In the meantime we must content ourselves with a loud hosanna to Ms. Pryce-Jones and Professor Parker for a fine job well done.

(Vol. 2, No. 3, p. 3, 1975)