Pepys’s diary at 350: Leaving behind his secretive shorthand

The 350th anniversary of the last entry in Samuel Pepys’s diary seemed a good occasion for a Twitter thread (with emojis). Here is the thread for those of you not on Twitter:

Pepys's diary is written in a special type of shorthand called Shelton's Tachygraphy. So I couldn't exactly *read* the entry – in fact in order to read it I would have needed either the key or plenty of decipherment time! More on this in this blog post https://t.co/ChGpDwZKA6

— CREWS Project (@crewsproject) May 31, 2019

(The blog post referred to is HERE)

What’s in a name? Samuel Pepys and the problems of decipherment

Last week I had the pleasure of going on a tour around the Pepys Library at Cambridge’s Magdalene College, where the book collection of famous 17^th century diarist Samuel Pepys is kept – including his famous diary itself. Pepys wrote his diary in a sort of code, which got me thinking about how we decipher coded texts, a problem closely related to working with undeciphered ancient writing systems.

The bookplate Samuel Pepys carefully pasted into the books in his collection. By permission of the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge.