The Code of Charles Dickens’ Shorthand Has Been Cracked by Computer Programmers, Solving a 160-Year-Old Mystery

Colin Marshall at Open Culture.

"...Dickens wrote both publicly and privately, and in the case of the latter he could write quite privately indeed: in documents for his own eyes only, he made use of a shorthand that he called it “the devil’s handwriting,” and which has long been devilishly impenetrable to scholars."

See Dickens, "A Full and Faithful Report of the Memorable Trial of Bardell against Pickwick" from The Pickwick Papers, in Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963) volume 2, and Little Dorritt, in Great Books of the Western World (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 47.