Gadsby: Champion of Youth

Gadsby: Champion of Youth is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright. The plot revolves around the fictional city Branton Hills, primarily dealing with the transformation, through youth's vigor, of the moribund and slothful community. The story's protagonist is a fifty-year old man named John Gadsby; he calls upon the youth of Branton Hills to help him bring activity and vitality back to the town.


The novel is most famous for a letter it omits; written as a lipogram, it purposefully does not use the letter "e" in any word. It inspired other authors to write lipogrammatic books, including Georges Perec's famous novel A Void.