Le Caucase illustré
I recently came upon a stack of dusty old magazines in my friend Ketevani Abashidze's cellar—various numbers of a magazine in French entitled Le Caucase illustré— which were published here in Tbilisi in the late nineteenth century.
The magazine was written by a certain "J. Mourier" (who might have also been an antiquarian: see image below viz. "Antiquités du Caucase"), and was printed in Tbilisi by the Imprimerie Martirossiantz.
"J. Mourier" was apparently a bit of an idiot, and some readers resented his crass stereotypification of the Caucasus (e.g. "The Georgians are a handsome race, but are a bit dim", "The Armenians have big noses, and are wily businessmen", &c.). The Georgian writer and poet Ilia Chavchavadze was so insensed by this nonsense that he challenged Mourier to a duel during a literary soirée given by Prince Abashidze. Mourier apparently fell to his knees, and begged to be released from the challenge; Chavchavadze did so, on condition that Mourier would desist from writing his racist and offensive drivel, and Mourier was never seen at Abashidze's literary salon again.
I have scanned No. 2 of the magazine, published in September 1889, and uploaded it to the internet; the PDF can de downloaded here.
Mourier wrote quite a few books on the region—notably a Guide au Caucase, perhaps the first French-language guidebook to the region, published in 1894; see this page for a complete scanned copy of the book.
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