Literature in Esperanto

Literature in the international language Esperanto is not a recent phenomenon. The two have been inextricably bound since the inception of the language in 1887. In fact An International language - the brochure which Dr Ludwig Zamenhof published in that year, contained several poems. And by the time of the first International Congress of Esperanto speakers in 1905, poetry and short story writing were flourishing in the fledgeling community. Today the catalogue of the Universal Esperanto Association's bookshop runs to over 200 pages. A healthy portion of this is original literature, whose authors span the globe. On average 10 novels, a dozen short story collections and twenty poetry anthologies appear every year. The following pages attempt to convey some of the flavour of that original literature and to recount some of the highlights of the literary history of Esperanto, from the earliest authors, to the Budapest School of the 1930s, to the Scottish School of the 1950s and finally to the Iberian School of this decade.