Dicksee, Lawrence Robert

1864-1932 A British *external auditing pioneer. Dicksee was a prolific writer on the practice and theory of external auditing and, almost self-handed, he produced most of the important English-language auditing literature of his generation. A *chartered accountant who qualified at the *Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in 1886, Dicksee spent several years in public practice. His first book, Auditing: A Practical Manual for Auditors, was published in 1893. The book was aimed at auditing practitioners and students, and it placed heavy emphasis on the role of the auditor in *fraud detection. The book was not the first on external auditing (e.g., Pixley, 1888), but it is now regarded as an early auditing classic. The book was a huge success and ran to 15 editions over the following decades. The success of Auditing also spread across the Atlantic, and its U.S. edition edited by *Robert Hiester Montgomery also went through several editions. With the passage of time, Dicksee’s Auditing has understandably lost most of its relevance to current auditing issues: It stands today as a text of historical interest only. However, it is a significant milestone in the development of auditing theory. Dicksee is also remembered for his pioneering academic teaching on auditing and accounting, and for a number of other important books, including a study of *window dressing. Further reading: Brief (1980); Dicksee (1893); Dicksee (1927); Kitchen and Parker (1994)