Discover Gadsby: The 50,000-Word Novel Written Without Using the Letter E (1939)

Discover Gadsby: The 50,000-Word Novel Written Without Using the Letter E (1939) “If Youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn’t constantly run across folks today who claim that ‘a child don’t know anything.’ ” Ranked alongside the other notable opening sentences of American literature, this falls somewhat short of, say, “Call me Ishmael.” The entire novel that follows is written in the same oddly stilted, circumlocutive prose, and a reader who skips the author’s introduction may not perceive just what has set it askew for some time. They’d also have to be reading an edition other than the first, with its bold promise of a “50,000 WORD NOVEL WITHOUT THE LETTER ‘E.’ ” The book is Ernest Vincent Wright’s Gadsby (1939). Though self-published in the late nineteen-thirties to no fanfare, it’s now acknowledged more or less widely as a literary oddit

Added 11 Apr 2026