Gadsby: A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter "E"

The plot revolves around the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, which is revitalized thanks to the efforts of protagonist John Gadsby and a youth group he organizes.

The novel is written as a lipogram and does not include words that contain the letter "e". Though self-published and little-noticed in its time, the book is a favorite of fans of constrained writing and is a sought-after rarity among some book collectors. Later editions of the book have sometimes carried the alternative subtitle: 50,000 Word Novel Without the Letter "E".

Fifty-year-old John Gadsby is alarmed by the decline of his hometown Branton Hills and rallies the city's young people to form an "Organization of Youth" to build civic spirit and improve living standards. Gadsby and his youthful army, despite some opposition, transform Branton Hills from a stagnant municipality into a bustling, thriving city. Towards the end of the book the members of Gadsby's organization receive diplomas in honor of their work. Gadsby becomes mayor and helps increase Branton Hills's population from 2,000 to 60,000.

The story begins around 1906 and continues through World War I, Prohibition, and President Warren G. Harding's administration. Gadsby is divided into two parts. The first part (about a quarter of the book's total length) is strictly a history of the city of Branton Hills and John Gadsby's place in it. The second part of the book devotes more time to fleshing out the rest of the town's characters.

The novel is written from the point of view of an anonymous narrator, who continually complains about his poor writing skills and frequently uses circumlocution. "Now, naturally, in writing such a story as this, with its conditions as laid down in its Introduction, it is not surprising that an occasional "rough spot" in composition is found," the narrator says. "So I trust that a critical public will hold constantly in mind that I am voluntarily avoiding words containing that symbol which is, by far, of most common inclusion in writing our Anglo-Saxon as it is, today."

The novel's 50,110 words do not contain a single "e."In Gadsby's introduction Wright says his primary difficulty was avoiding the "-ed" suffix for past tense verbs. He focused on using verbs that do not take the -ed suffix and constructions with "do" (for instance "did walk" instead of "walked"). Scarcity of word options also drastically limited discussion involving quantity, pronouns, and many common words. Wright was unable to talk about any quantity between six and thirty.[3] An article in the linguistic journal Word Ways said that 250 of the 500 most commonly used words in English were still available to Wright despite the omission of words with "e". Wright uses abbreviations on occasion, but only if the full form is similarly lipogrammatic, such as with "Dr.", and "P.S.".

Wright also turns famous sayings into lipogrammatic form. Music can "calm a wild bosom", and Keats' "a thing of beauty is a joy forever" becomes "a charming thing is a joy always