Penned roughly a century apart at either end of the long eighteenth century, the lines above signal something of the importance of accounting for women. As the anonymous author of Advice to the Maidens of London suggested, a working knowledge of accounting methods was a valuable skill for middleclass women to have. The full title made clear the author's thinking:

Likewise stressing the importance of good accounting, the rhyming couplets were penned by a woman from a rather different social background than the supposed consumers of the advice book. Elizabeth Hood was a Somerset gentlewoman who spent more than sixty years managing a modest landed estate in Butleigh Wootton and the surrounding area, keeping the estate accounts not just as a widow but also before and during her marriage. She wrote the couplets in the inside cover of an account book used to record sales from the home farm, purchases of land and investments in drainage works, activities which while at least partially profit-driven certainly did not constitute an engagement in the kind of trade or commerce envisaged by the advice book's author.