Mathematical Treasure: Francis Walkingame’s The Tutor’s Assistant

Francis Walkingame (1723–1783) was a British writing master who also maintained a boarding school in Kensington. His arithmetic text, The Tutor’s Assistant, first published in 1751, became a standard text in British schools for the next century. Its influence even extended to North America, where at least 11 editions of the book were published. The images below are from the 1752 second printing.

The Table of Contents provides an outline of the material covered:

A list of symbols used by Walkingame:

After explaining the Rule of Three, Walkingame provided 50 word problems (the first 9 are shown).

A full digitization of the copy owned by the British Library is available from GoogleBooks.

Reference

Wallis, P. J. 1963. An Early Best Seller: Francis Walkingame’s ‘The Tutor’s Assistant.’ The Mathematical Gazette 47(361): 199–208.

Index to Mathematical Treasures