A group of amateur codebreakers has helped experts to crack Charles Dickens' mysterious code used in his infamous "Tavistock Letter".

As well as a wealth of novels, Dickens left behind a few mysteries when he died in 1870. The celebrated author was a fan of writing in an archaic shorthand from the 1700s called Gurney's Brachygraphy, which he modified himself to create what he dubbed "The Devil's Handwriting".

Ten manuscripts spanning from 1830-1860 have been found using the shorthand, and for the most part have been undecipherable by experts. In 2020, The Dickens Code Project from the University of Leicester called upon amateur codebreakers to help decipher The Tavistock Letter – a piece that has gone untranslated for more than 150 years. The project saw over 1,000 people download the letter in order to try their hand at cracking it.

Two years later, thanks to the efforts of the amateurs and with a few notable contributors, the letter has largely been translated.

“As a hobby, I frequent the codes group on Reddit, and saw that the puzzles involving shorthand stay unsolved the longest. After solving one of these, I saw a posting of some of Charles Dickens’s shorthand. I made a project of learning Gurney’s shorthand, and participated in their #SolveItDickens open workshops on Zoom," Shane Baggs, a California IT worker who won a £300 ($400) prize for his contributions, said in a press release.

“After getting mostly C grades in literature, I never dreamed anything I’d ever do would be of interest to Dickens scholars!  It has been an honour to work with Professor Hugo Bowles and Dr Claire Wood, and I am glad I could contribute.”

The letter, unfortunately, does not contain any new literature or plot outlines for some unwritten manuscripts. However, it does offer a glimpse into a troubled part of his life. 

“We collected the lightbulb flashes from different solvers and everything just fitted together. You might call it 'jigsaw reading'. One of our solvers found the words 'Ascension Day' and another found 'next week', which helped us pinpoint the date of the letter. Solvers who knew their Dickens identified the abbreviation 'HW' as his journal Household Words and connected the symbol for 'round' to his journal All the Year Round," Professor at the University of Foggia and author of Dickens and the Stenographic Mind, Hugo Bowles, explained in the press release.

“When other solvers found the words 'advertisement', 'refused' and 'sent back', we knew he was writing about an advertisement of his which had been rejected. The words 'untrue and unfair' and 'in open court' suggested that he was complaining that the rejection had no legal basis.”

The letter appears to relate to an announcement of his new journal All Year Round, which he attempted to advertise in The Times in May 1859. Dickens had fallen out with the co-owners of his previous journal Household Words after the publishers refused to publish a statement by him denying rumors of him having an affair with an actress.

The publishers wanted to keep hold of their readers of Household Words, and sued Dickens to stop him from giving the impression that the journal was being discontinued. The judge decided that he could announce the new magazine, as long as it was phrased that it was being discontinued by him, not the publishers.

When he attempted to advertise the new journal, however, it appears that The Times had legal concerns, and refused. At this point, he wrote the letter to a personal acquaintance in order to plead that the mistake be rectified.

“I feel obliged,” the letter to a friend at The Times opens, “though very reluctantly, to appeal to you in person.”

The letter, researchers at the University of Leicester say, comes from a fraught time in Dickens' life.

"In the letter we glimpse Dickens the businessman, using personal contacts to promote his interests and strongly arguing his case," Dr Claire Wood, Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Leicester, said in a statement.

“It is particularly interesting to see Dickens using language from the ‘Bradbury and Evans v Dickens’ ruling. Dickens was highly critical of the legal system in Bleak House, written earlier in the same decade, but less so when things worked in his favour.”

It is thought that he kept a copy of the letter in shorthand as a legal record. 

Though the translation may be disappointing for anyone hoping for a plot outline to The Muppet's Christmas Carol 2 or Revenge of Great Expectations, there are over 70 pages of notes out there still waiting to be translated, in archives around the world as well as private collections.