Deciphered shorthand

‘Didactic’ transcript

‘Didactic’ has turned out to be a short piece criticising Rome and commenting on Catholicism in terms similar to Dickens’s ‘Pictures from Italy’ (1846). Download a transcript here.

Deciphered shorthand

Telling Tales: Dictation, Gossip, Fact, and Fiction

Is it important that Dickens is dictating to his shorthand pupil, Arthur Stone, in the texts that our Dickens Decoders have transcribed? In the first of a series of three blogs, Professor Hugo Bowles thinks through the implications of these texts as spoken stories, as well as the role of dictation, gossip, fact, and fiction.