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''Gadsby'' is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright. The plot revolves around the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, which is revitalized as a result of 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 favourite 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"''. In 1968, the novel entered the public domain in the United States due to failure to renew copyright in the 28th year after publication.〔http://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/bin/search/simple/process?query=Gadsby〕 ==Lipogrammatic quality== The novel's 50,110 words do not contain a single ''e''.〔 〕 In ''Gadsbys 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.〔(Gadsby: A Story of 50,000 Words ) Introduction, online copy hosted at Spineless Books〕 An article in the linguistic periodical ''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, i.e. "Dr." (Doctor), and "P.S." (Postscript) would be allowed but not "Mr." (Mister). Wright also turns famous sayings into lipogrammatic form. Instead of William Congreve's original line, "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast", music is said to "hath charms to calm a wild bosom." John Keats' "a thing of beauty is a joy forever" becomes "a charming thing is a joy always". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gadsby (novel)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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