In Timothie Bright and the Origins of Early Modern Shorthand, J.D. Fleming brings together two areas of sixteenth-century intellectual history. One is the period emergence of artificial systems for verbatim shorthand notation-a crucial episode in the history of information. The other is the ancient medical discourse of melancholy humour, or black bile. Timothie Bright (1550?1615), physician and priest, prompts the juxtaposition. For he was the author, not only of the period’s original shorthand manual-Characterie (1588)-but also of the first book in English on the dark humour: The Treatise of Melancholy (1586).