The words that recur in the literature of an age offer clues to contemporary fascinations and anxieties. In the eighteenth century, “account” is such a word, taking various forms and conveying multiple meanings. Account, accounting, accountable: the words are found everywhere from tutelary texts to novels, particularly – it turns out – in literature about and directed toward women. In eighteenth-century usage, “account” denoted supposedly true histories as well as fictitious chronicles, encompassed simple financial sums as well as complex double-entry bookkeeping, described Protestant debt–credit relationships to God as well as social ties exacting in their reciprocal economic responsibility
