Anastasia Eristavi-Khoshtaria

1868-1951 / writer

Anastasia was born into an aristocratic family in Gori. She worked as a teacher in her home town and founded a free school for peasant children there. Later she founded the women's organization Mandilosani (1913-14).

With help from the famous poet Akaki Tsereteli, she moved to Tbilisi in order to continue her writing career.  Her novels "On the Slippery Road" (1897) and "Turn of Fate" (1901) were quite successful and partially filled the existing void in Georgian romanticism.

Anastasia's novels and short stories explore the same theme. They describe the lives of the women of the Georgian nobility in the mid-19th century, when old values were falling by the wayside and a new economic and moral order was taking shape whose main ideals were non-indentured labour and sincere love.

After Georgia's Sovietization in 1921, Anastasia quit writing and composed only introductions for her own works.