I've returned to The Book of Lists today because facts have been at a premium all week - I think everyone's brains have regressed into a torpor that only allows basic bodily functions, without allowing the capacity to consider the possibility of another month of stinking winter. Anyway, this is the best I could do today:
A lipogram is the name given to a piece of writing that intentionally omits a particular letter.
Some famous examples include Gyles Brandreth's versions of Shakespeare's plays which each omit certain letters (Hamlet was redone without a single 'I' in it), and Jacques Arago, who wrote a book entitled 'Voyage Around the World Without The Letter A' - regrettably, it contains one instance of the letter A - in the word 'serait' which, weirdly linking back to Brandreth, roughly translates as 'to be'. There are some staggering examples of lipograms in action, including a 2001 novel about a nation outlawing letters, where as a letter is outlawed, it disappears from the novel altogether. As I'm sure the likes of Tom Paulin and Will Self would agree, that's pretty sweet.
There's also the more famous novel 'Gadsby', which includes 50 thousand words and not one instance of the letter E. This rang a bell, but I thought that it was 'The Great Gatsby'. I did an English degree you know. I'm employing those trusty skills in this very article, in fact, as I have craftily been constructing a lithogram of my own... Though you may not have realised it, this entry does not contain a single instance of the letter X. Apart from that one.
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