Featured on PDR in the collection Cryptography: or the History, Principles, and Practice of Cipher-Writing (1898)

Frederick Edward Hulme (1841–1909) was an artist, naturalist and antiquarian who loved to write books. He did so on flowers, butterflies, moths, Christian art, heraldry, flags, proverbs, and folklore. In 1898 he bent his pen towards Cryptography, an exploration of covert communication through history. “That which is secret and mysterious,” he wrote, “calling for acute intelligence to penetrate its meaning, has always exercised a great fascination on the human mind.” And none more so than Hulme’s. The book is full of enthusiastic attempts to find the value in ancient cipher systems, though these often come to nothing: “One finds over and over again things commended by various writers that entirely break down when brought to the vital test of actual experiment.”