ABSTRACT
Prose in Georgia was hindered by mundane factors: the severity of Tsar Nicholas I s censorship, the tiny population of Tbilisi in the first half of the nineteenth century (a mere 50,000), a city which slowly recovered from the Persian invasion only to become more a Russian-Armenian than Georgian centre. Georgian writers lived either in Russia or Tbilisi: their potential readers were in the villages and sleepy country towns. Poetry survives in manuscript; novels require a press, media, a readership. Only under Count Vorontsov and Bariatinsky, in the 1850s and 1860s, did censorship relax, education in Georgian (at least to secondary level) become universal among the gentry, and national consciousness reawaken (largely in the university of Saint Petersburg), so that enough readers were available to support prose-writers and their journals. The abortive Literary Supplement of 1832 lasted only five issues. Not until 1852 did Tsiskari ცისკარი ‘Dawn’) appear. (It closed in 1875.) With intermittent periods of official oppression, internal wrangling, and economic problems, Georgian writers had a choice of outlets and even a source of income. The weekly Droeba (დროება ‘The Times’) first came out in 1866, to be published thrice weekly and then daily in the 1870s). In 1869–72 the monthly Mnatobi (მნათობი ‘The Luminary’) appeared (to be resurrected much later). The democratically inclined monthly Krebuli (კრებული ‘The Collection’) lasted from 1871 to 1873. In 1877 Iveria (ივერია ‘Iberia’), first a weekly, then a daily, began its long existence.
