In 1937, Ernest Vincent Wright composed a novel entitled Gadsby: a 50,100-word work containing no instance of the letter 'e' -- the most frequently used letter in the English alphabet. To protect against an accidental 'e,' Wright tied down the corresponding bar on his typewriter.
[In 1969, a French novel (La Disparition) appeared which was similarly devoid of the letter 'e'. And James Thurber once wrote a short story about a strange country which prohibited the use of the letter 'o'...]
[When Nobel laureates Shildon Glashow, Gerald Weinberg and Steven Feinberg were schoolmates in the Bronx High School for Science, they regularly wrote for a science fiction magazine called ETAOINSHRDLU. The logic behind this unusual name was used by Sherlock Holmes to crack the code of the Dancing Men: These are the twelve most frequently used letters in the English language.]
Sources
M. Driscoll, ed., 5087 Trivia Questions & Answers
