Esperanto literature

Esperanto literature began before the official publication of the constructed language Esperanto; the language's creator, L. L. Zamenhof, translated poetry and prose into the language as he was developing it as a test of its completeness and expressiveness, and published several translations and a short original poem as an appendix to the first book on the language, Unua Libro. Other early speakers wrote poetry, stories and essays in the language; Henri Vallienne was the first to write novels in Esperanto. Except for a handful of poems, most of the literature from Esperanto's first twenty years or so is now regarded as of historical interest only.

, Heinrich Luyken, and Jean Forge.

Modern authors include Claude Piron and William Auld, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature a number of times.

Esperanto has seen a solid production of material in Braille since the work of the blind Russian Esperantist Vasilij Eroŝenko, who wrote and taught in Japan and China in the 1910s and 1920s.

[http://harold-brown-author-verkisto.webs.com Harold Brown] wrote several modern plays in Esperanto.

Over 25,000 books in Esperanto have been published, and the largest Esperanto book service at the World Esperanto Association offers over 4,000 books in its catalog. Over 100 original novels have been published in Esperanto, plus a larger number of novellas, short story collections, and poetry collections. Two major literary magazines, "Fonto" and "Literatura Foiro", appear regularly; some other magazines, such as "Monato", also publish fiction.

Some of the major figures of Esperanto literature:
*Marjorie Boulton
*William Auld
*Julio Baghy
*Kazimierz Bein (translations)
*Jorge Camacho
*Vasili Eroshenko
*Antoni Grabowski (mainly translations)
*Kálmán Kalocsay
*Nikolai Vladimirovich Nekrasov
*Mauro Nervi
*Claude Piron
*Frederic Pujulà i Vallés
*Teodoro Schwartz (or Tivadar Soros, George Soros' father)
*Vladimir Varankin

ee also

*Esperanto culture.

References

* "The Esperanto Book", [http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/EBook/chap09.html Chapter 9: "The Literary Scene"] by Don Harlow. 1995.
* "La Fenomeno Esperanto" by William Auld. UEA, 1988.

External links

* [http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/eo Writings in Esperanto at Project Gutenberg]