History of Financial Advice Collection. John Houghton was an apothecary and dealer in luxury goods, such as tea, coffee and chocolate, whose Collection of Letters for the Improvement of Husbandry & Trade, was first published between 1681 and 1683. The collection is arranged around a series of letters from correspondents, either posing a query or providing advice, and covers a wide variety of subjects. Many of the letters concern agricultural problems such as “smuttiness in corn,” and Houghton is credited with providing one of the first accounts of the introduction of the potato to Ireland. Discussion of the economic policies of various foreign powers are interspersed throughout and there are some items about investments. In 1682, for instance, Houghton included information about the investing process, including extremely detailed information about how investment schemes (such as in the East India Company) work in practice. Like Richard Hayes and Mrs Beeton, Houghton’s name became a brand denoting a particular type of “advice book.” Richard Bradley, a Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge, was responsible for the later revised editions. There were a number of reprints in the 1700s.