author
Ernest Vincent Wright
1872–1939
Best known for the wildly inventive novel Gadsby, this American writer became a small legend of literary constraint by producing a book of more than 50,000 words while largely avoiding the letter “e.” His work still fascinates readers who love unusual writing challenges and forgotten literary curiosities.
1 Audiobook
Gadsby : a story of over 50,000 words without using the letter "E"
by Ernest Vincent Wright
About the author
Born in Martins Ferry, Ohio, Ernest Vincent Wright was an American writer whose reputation rests mainly on Gadsby, published in 1939. The novel is famous as a lipogram: its main text avoids the letter “e,” an extraordinary feat in English prose.
Before Gadsby, Wright also published other work, including The Wonderful Fairies of the Sun and Thoughts and Reveries of an American Bluejacket. Even so, Gadsby is the book that kept his name alive, thanks to its unusual method and the sheer persistence it must have taken to complete.
Wright died in 1939, the same year Gadsby appeared. Today he is remembered less as a bestselling novelist than as a singular literary experimenter whose most famous book still feels playful, stubborn, and surprisingly ambitious.