In this guest blog, Professor Kate Loveman, author of The Strange History of Samuel Pepys’s Diary (2025), introduces Samuel Pepys, his shorthand diary, and efforts to decipher it.
Blog
Solution to the Winter 2024 Challenge
Check out the results of our latest challenge here!
Solution to the September-October 2024 Challenge
Check out the results from our latest challenge here!
Solution to the August 2024 challenge
Check out the results from our latest challenge here!
Solution to the July 2024 challenge
Check out the results from our latest challenge! Can you identify the source of the unidentified text discovered by the Dickens Decoders?
Solution to the June 2024 challenge
In our June challenge, the Dickens Decoders identified two more pages of dictation from Sydney Smith’s ‘I would not live always’ – and another two without an identified source text. Find out more and download a line-by-line transcript here!
Solution to the May 2024 Challenge
The Dickens Decoders matched most of the shorthand in our May challenge to passages from Sydney Smith’s work – but two unidentified lines remain! Find out more and download a line-by-line transcript here.
2024 Easter Challenge Solution: A new Dickens shorthand mystery?
Rather than a new mystery, the curious ‘specimen’ of shorthand from The Strand Magazine turned out to be an old ‘friend’ from the Brachygraphy manual… Find out more and download a line-by-line transcript here.
Continuing Notebook D II: Solutions
The Dickens Decoders have made short work of a further four pages from ‘Notebook D’, which Arthur Stone kept from his shorthand lessons with Dickens. Find out more about the source texts and download a line-by-line transcript here.
Continuing Notebook D: Solutions
The Dickens Decoders have continued to make progress on Notebook D from Arthur Stone’s shorthand lessons with Dickens! Find out more here.