Accounting in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Available to Purchase

The English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340‐1400) had a practical knowledge of contemporary accounting and made good use of it in The Canterbury Tales, both in his descriptions of the reeve and the merchant in the General Prologue and in the Shipman’s Tale, which can be read as a series of accounting events and transactions. These can be expressed in double entry form although it is highly unlikely that Chaucer was familiar with that technique.