The 50,000-Word Novel Written Without the Letter E
In 1939, American author Ernest Vincent Wright published Gadsby, a 50,000-word novel written entirely without using the letter E, the most common letter in English. To prevent accidental keystrokes while typing the manuscript over several months, Wright reportedly tied down the letter E key on his typewriter.
The Challenge of the Most Common Letter
In the English language, the letter E reigns supreme. Making up roughly twelve to thirteen percent of all letters in standard English text, it appears in essential articles, ubiquitous pronouns, and fundamental verb conjugations. Omission of this single vowel breaks the basic machinery of English grammar. Sentences cannot use the definite article 'the,' common pronouns like 'he,' 'she,' 'they,' 'we,' or 'me,' nor can regular verbs rely on the standard past-tense suffix '-ed.'
A work composed entirely under the deliberate omission of one or more letters is known as a lipogram, a literary constraint with roots stretching back to antiquity. While many early lipograms were short poems or brief rhetorical exercises, attempting an entire full-length novel under such an extreme restriction was long regarded as an insurmountable technical barrier. Ernest Vincent Wright set out to prove that narrative storytelling could survive within these self-imposed boundaries.
The Mechanics of Circumlocution
To write fifty thousand words without ever striking the letter E, Wright had to invent extensive circumlocutions and develop an alternate grammatical style. Without words like 'the,' he relied heavily on demonstratives like 'this' or indefinite articles like 'a,' alongside possessive constructions and direct naming. Everyday conversational shorthand was impossible; simple dialogue required constant mental translation into vocabulary free of the forbidden character.
Numbers presented an especially difficult hurdle. In English, every cardinal number between six and thirty contains the letter E—including seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and all the teens and twenties. Numbers like thirty, fifty, and eighty are similarly off-limits. Wright had to describe quantities through creative phrasing, comparisons, or arithmetic descriptions, turning basic figures into elaborate verbal puzzles.