The public can help to solve a coded Charles Dickens century-old letter. There is a cash reward.
Dickens created the so-called “Tavistock Letter” in modified brachygraphy, a type of shorthand that was popular during 18th-century England.
Researchers have been stumped by the code and have now turned to amateur cryptographers to try and decipher it, offering a £300 prize to do so before New Year’s Eve.
The Dickens Code Project at the University of Leicester and University of Foggia will award the prize. It is funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Although the letter is one of the surviving manuscripts of Dickens, it was never read. He had also burned many documents from his Gad’s Hill residence in Kent.
This letter, which has been untranslated for many years, is one of Dickens’ surviving shorthand notes. He had burned a lot of documents.
Blue letter paper is used to cover the manuscript. It bears the heading “Tavistock House”, the London home where Dickens wrote Bleak House and A Tale of Two Cities, as well as other works.
This heading is where the name of the letter comes from.
Hugo Bowles, professor of English at the University of Foggia in Italy told The Times: ‘It looks simple but really is not.
You read all the consonants, then fill in any gaps.
“It’s a bit like Scrabble in your head.”
“Dickens liked puzzles and word games, so this system was created.”
The shorthand system of Dickens was partly illuminated by researchers who used a notebook kept at the John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester
Researchers used a notebook at Manchester’s John Rylands Library to partially illuminate Dickens shorthand system.
Dr Claire Wood is a University of Leicester lecturer in Victorian literature. She told The Times that:[Dickens]He mentions symbols that are less common and aren’t appearing in the report he is writing.
“Instead, he creates new marks which make more sense and saves him time as an editor.
However, the problem with the genius’s handwriting is still a concern for those who want to take the money.
The Times reported that Professor Bowles said Dickens’s messy handwriting was a problem for researchers when trying to find the truth of the letter.
The Times reported that Professor Bowles said Dickens’s messy handwriting has made it difficult for researchers to decipher the actual contents of the letter.
He stated that the notebook was not enough to decode all of it.
It gives some of his additional symbols which can be useful but most of the problem is related to his writing.
He has messy shorthand, much like messy handwriting.
A variety of techniques have been used by researchers to decipher Dickens’ complex code. These include translating parts, going backwards and using machine learning.
Each technique failed due to the inability to find patterns using available material.