Literature in the Esperanto language began before the first official publication in Esperanto in 1887: 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. The first female Esperanto novelist was Edith Alleyne Sinnotte with her book Lilio published in 1918. Except for a handful of poems, most of the literature from Esperanto's first two decades is now regarded as of historical interest only.