Shorthand’s Impact

In 1588 Timothy Bright published his Characterie; An Arte of Shorte, Swifte and Secrete Writing by Character which introduced a system with 500 arbitrary symbols each representing one word. Bright’s book was followed by a number of others, including John Willis’s Art of Stenography in 1602, Edmond Willis’s An abbreviation of writing by character in 1618, and Thomas Shelton’s Short Writing in 1626 (later re-issued as Tachygraphy).

English shorthand was invented as a way to record speech verbatim. It was first used to capture  sermons; “virtually all the manuals show how heavily the repetitive and formulaic diction of sermons shaped shorthand systems. During the civil war and in the later seventeenth century, however, the reading public came to expect stenographically-derived news reporting, especially of trials and scaffold speeches, occasionally of debates and public meetings.”

[Technologies of Writing in the Age of Print, part of the Exhibitions at the Folger opened September 28, 2006 and closed on February 17, 2007. The exhibition was curated by Peter Stallybrass, Michael Mendle, and Heather Wolfe.]

904G Theophilus Metcalfe active 1649.

 A Manuscript copy of :

Short-writing, the most easie, exact, lineal, and speedy method that hath ever been obtained, or taught. Composed by Theophilus Metcalfe, author and professor of the said art. The last edition. With a new table for shortning of words. Which book is able to make the practitioner perfect without a teacher. As many hundreds in this city and elsewhere, that are able to write sermons word for word, can from their own experience testifie. A young man, that lately lived in Cornhill, learned so well by this book that he wrote out all the Bible in this character.

England: after 1689 and before 1717                                                                              $5500

Octavo6 X 4 inches  55, [7]pp. + portrait of author. The last section of 7 pp. contains Directions for Book-keeping after the Italian Method.

This manuscript is bound in full modern calf. This copybook manuscript is taken from the last edition published by Metcalfe. The entire work is done with remarkable calligraphy. This is a rare copy manuscript item with complementary addendum on Italian Book-Keeping.

Theophilus Metcalfe (bap. 1610 – c.1645) was an English stenographer. He invented a shorthand system that became popular, in particular, in New England, where it was used to record the Salem witch trials.[1]Metcalfe was baptised in Richmond, Yorkshire, and was the tenth child of Matthew Metcalfe and his wife Maria Taylor; Thomas Taylor (1576–1632) was his mother’s brother. A professional writer and teacher of shorthand, Metcalfe in 1645 resided in the London parish of St Katharine’s by the Tower. He died that year or early in 1646, when his widow assigned rights to reissue the book of his system.

Metcalfe published a stenographic system very much along the lines of Thomas Shelton’s Tachygraphy. The first edition of his work was entitled Radio-Stenography, or Short Writing and is supposed to have been published in 1635. A so-called sixth edition appeared at London in 1645. It was followed in 1649 by A Schoolmaster to Radio-Stenography, explaining all the Rules of the said Art, by way of Dialogue betwixt Master and Scholler, fitted to the weakest capacities that are desirous to learne this Art. Many editions of the system appeared under the title of Short Writing: the most easie, exact, lineall, and speedy Method that hath ever yet been obtained or taught by any in this Kingdome.

902G Thomas Shelton 1601-1650

Zeiglographia. or A New art of  never before published. More easie, exact, short, and speedie than any here to fore. Invented & composed By Thomas Shelton Author and teacher of ye said art Allowed by Authoritie.

London: Printed by M.[ary] S.[immons] And are to be sold at the Author’s house in Bore’s Head Court by Cripple-Gate,  1659.                                                                                 $2,500

Octavo 5 1/2 X 3 1/4 inches . A4, B-D8, E4.  The first edition is reported to have been printed in 1649, the Address “To the reader” dated: Sept. 10. 1649 , But the 1650 edition is titled Zeiglographia; New art of short-writing never before published.

Counting the unrecorded first, this would be the fifth edition. “A re-issue of the 1654 edition with the same title page except for the alteration of the date to 1659.”
This copy is in a well-used state. The leaves are all slightly stained and dog-eared. Paper repairs have corrected many of the curling corners. It has its original calf binding but could use a rebacking.

The Shelton short hand systems were used by Samuel Pepys, Thomas Jefferson and Sir Isaac Newton. “Thomas Shelton [a] stenographer, descended from an old Norfolk family, was born in 1601. It is probable that he began life as a writing-master, and that he was teaching and studying shorthand before he was nineteen, for in 1649 he speaks of having had more than thirty years’ study and practice of the art. He produced his first book, called ‘Short Writing, the most exact method,’ in 1626, but no copy of this is known to exist. In 1630 he brought out the second edition enlarged, which was ‘sould at the professors house in Cheapside, over against Bowe church.’ He is styled ‘author and professor of the said art.’ Another edition was published in London in 1636. In February 1637-8 he published his most popular work, called ‘Tachygraphy. The most exact and compendious methode of Shorthand Swift Writing that hath ever yet beene published by any … Approved by both Universities.’ It was republished in 1642, and in the same year Shelton brought out a catechism or ‘Tutor to Tachygraphy,’ the author’s residence being then in Old Fish Street.  In 1645 he was teaching his ‘Tachygraphy’ at ‘the professors house, in the Poultry, near the Church.’ Editions of this work continued to be published down to 1710.“Shelton, who was a zealous puritan, published in 1640, ‘A Centurie of Similies,’ and in the same year he was cited to appear before the court of high commission, but the offense with which he was charged is not specified. In 1649 his second system of stenography appeared under the title of ‘Zeiglographia, or a New Art of Short Writing never before published, more easie, exact, short, and speedie than heretofore. Invented and composed by Thomas Shelton, being his last thirty years study.’ It is remarkable that the alphabet differs from the tachygraphy of 1641 in every respect excepting the letters q, r, v, and z. It is, in fact, an entirely original system. On its appearance Shelton was still living in the Poultry, and there he probably died in or before October 1650. The book continued to be published down to 1687.“Many subsequent writers copied Shelton or published adaptations of his best known system of ‘tachygraphy,’ which was extensively used and highly popular. Old documents between 1640 and 1700, having shorthand signs on them, may often be deciphered by Shelton’s characters, though the practice of adding arbitrary signs sometimes proves a stumbling block. It was in this system that Pepys wrote his celebrated Diary, and not, as frequently stated, in the system erroneously attributed to Jeremiah Rich.“An adaptation of the system to the Latin language appeared under the title of ‘Tachygraphia, sive exactissima et compendiosissima breviter scribendi methodus,’ London, 1660, 16mo. This adaptation was described and illustrated in Gaspar Schott’s ‘Technica Curiosa,’ published at Nuremberg in 1665. It was slightly modified by Charles Aloysius Ramsay, who published it in France as his own.“About 1660 there appeared in London, in 64mo, ‘The whole book of Psalms in meeter according to that most exact & compendious method of short writing composed by Thomas Shelton (being his former hand) approved by both universities & learnt by many thousands.’ It is uncertain whether Shelton’s or Rich’s Psalms were published first. They appeared nearly together; both were engraved by T. Cross; and the size of each is 2.5 x 1.5 inches.” (quoted from the DNB)

Wing S-3093 Five copies in the US: Folger ,Huntington ,New York Public ,Washington University, Yale :Westby-Gibson, p. 201-202; Galland, bibliography of cryptology, p. 169.

903G Theophilus Metcalfe active 1649.

Short-writing, the most easie, exact, lineal, and speedy method that hath ever been obtained, or taught. Composed by Theophilus Metcalfe, author and professor of the said art. The last edition. With a new table for shortning of words. Which book is able to make the practitioner perfect without a teacher. As many hundreds in this city and elsewhere, that are able to write sermons word for word, can from their own experience testifie. A young man, that lately lived in Cornhill, learned so well by this book that he wrote out all the Bible in this character.

London : printed for, and are to be sold by John Hancock at the first shop in Popes-Head-Alley in Cornhil, at the sign of the three Bibles, 1674.                                           $2,500

Octavo 5 1/2 X 3 1/2 inches . A8, and 20 plates (Third through the seventh plates are numbered 8, 12, 13/14, 15/16, and 17/18.) ;

Metcalfe’s work on shorthand was first entered into Stationers’ Hall in 1633, though no copy is extant; the first edition listed in ESTC is dated 1645 and billed on the titlepage as the sixth edition.  Making this the 9th edition or so And NOT the ‘Last’

This copy has some soiling, cropped close; final leaf torn at corner, loss of 3 letters. Lib. blind stamp on title. A good, textually complete copy.  NYPL, p. 186.; Bib. Pepysiana, p. 51. Westby-Gibson, p. 130, “10th ed.” not calling for engraved title and portrait, as noted in “some copies” by Bib. Pepys. (5287) The engraver of the plates was Thomas Cross who was active 1632-1682.

Theophilus Metcalfe (bap. 1610 – c.1645) was an English stenographer. He invented a shorthand system that became popular, in particular, in New England, where it was used to record the Salem witch trials. Metcalfe was baptised in Richmond, Yorkshire, and was the tenth child of Matthew Metcalfe and his wife Maria Taylor; Thomas Taylor (1576–1632) was his mother’s brother. A professional writer and teacher of shorthand, Metcalfe in 1645 resided in the London parish of St Katharine’s by the Tower. He died that year or early in 1646, when his widow assigned rights to reissue the book of his system. Metcalfe published a stenographic system very much along the lines of Thomas Shelton’s Tachygraphy. The first edition of his work was entitled Radio-Stenography, or Short Writing and is supposed to have been published in 1635. A so-called sixth edition appeared at London in 1645. It was followed in 1649 by A Schoolmaster to Radio-Stenography, explaining all the Rules of the said Art, by way of Dialogue betwixt Master and Scholler, fitted to the weakest capacities that are desirous to learne this Art. Many editions of the system appeared under the title of Short Writing: the most easie, exact, lineall, and speedy Method that hath ever yet been obtained or taught by any in this Kingdome. The numbering of later editions, from the 19th of 1679 reflects no more than different printings taken from the same plates, engraved by Frederick Henry Van Hove of Haarlem. (DNB)

Almost all systems were designed to appeal to sermon note-takers. Thomas Shelton’s system includes formulaic phrases found in most sermons. Metcalfe’s system was similar to Thomas Shelton’s and Jeremiah Rich’s. Unlike them, however, he boldly claimed that it could be learned without a teacher. 

Wing M-1932: Three copies in the US: Huntington ,New York Public ,Library of Congress : ESTC; R19457;     Westby-Gibson, p. 130; NYPL, p. 186.; Bib. Pepysiana, p. 51

Resources:

Anderson’s Hist. of Shorthand, p. 114;

Gibson’s Bibliography of Shorthand, pp. 12, 96, 129;

Granger’s Biog. Hist. of England, 5th edit. iii. 194; Journalist, 25 March 1887, p. 381;

Levy’s Hist. of Shorthand,

Rockwell’s Literature of Shorthand, 2nd edit. p. 109; Shorthand, i. 50, ii. 10, 55.]

 Dictionary of National Biography. 2nd Edition (1909). Vol. 18, pgs. 45 & 46.

Pitman’s  A History of Shorthand  (1891)

“A Critical and Historical Account of the Art of Shorthand” The National Stenographer
(Nov 1882)

 Butler’s Story of British Shorthand ( 1951.)