Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) was a student of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and bequeathed his personal library of 3000 volumes to the College on condition that the contents remained intact and unaltered; they remain there, in his original bookcases, to this day. In the early twentieth century, a project to produce a complete catalogue was begun, and four volumes were published between 1914 and 1940. Volume 4 describes the books about shorthand which Pepys – an enthusiastic practitioner himself - methodically collected, and had bound in five volumes. Over the centuries, various specialists had consulted this important collection but this catalogue brought it to the attention of bibliographers for the first time. It provides background information about the author of each work, places the content in its historical context and supplies bibliographic details together with notes about other surviving copies. It is a valuable resource for historians of stenography and its uses.
