Ekaterine Gabashvili

Born on 16 June 1851, Ekaterine Tarkhnishvili was born into an aristocratic family in Gori, then part of Imperial Russia. She was the daughter of Revaz Tarkhnishvili and Sopio Bagraton-Davitashvili. After completing her primary education, she attended the city's best school, a private boarding school run by Madam Favre. At 17, she opened a private school devoted to the education of peasant children, concerned as she was by the conditions of the peasantry. She married Aleksandre Gabashvili when she was 19, eventually raising 11 children. Her writing was influenced by two works on the emancipation of women which had been published in Georgian: Harriet Taylor Mill's The Enfranchisement of Women and Fanny Lewald's Für und wider die Frauen. As a result, from 1872 she set about mobilizing Georgian women by establishing women's circles in Tbilisi, Kutaisi, Gori and Khoni, focused on the publication and translation of relevant women's literature. In 1897, she established a women's professional school which led to girls schools around the country. Gabashvili was an active member of the Society for the Advancement of Learning Among Georgians. In 1890, together with Anastasia Tumanishvili-Tsereteli, she co-founded Jejili, a journal which published children's literature, encouraging interest in the genre in Georgia. Gabashvili was the maternal grandmother of Maro Makashvili.