Tpileli, Ioseb. The Poem of the Great Mouravi (Didmouraviani). Endpapers by Lado Gudiashvili; design by V. Grigolia, 1939. In Georgian.

ტფილელი, იოსებ. დიდმოურავიანი / იოსებ ტფილელი ; რედაქცია და წინასიტყვაობა გიორგი ლეონიძისა ; ფორზაცი ლადო გუდიაშვილისა ; გაფორმება ვ. გრიგოლიასი.
[თბილისი] : სახელგამი, 1939 (პოლიგრაფკომბინატი). LXIV, 109, [2] გვერდი : [2] ჩართული ფურცელი, პორტრეტი და ავტოგრაფის ფაქსიმილე ; 22 სმ.
მაგარი ყდა. ტირაჟი 5 000 ც.
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Tpileli, Ioseb. The Poem of the Great Mouravi (Didmouraviani) / by Ioseb Tpileli ; edited, with an introduction, by Giorgi Leonidze ; endpapers by Lado Gudiashvili ; design by V. Grigolia.
[Tbilisi]: Sakhelgami, 1939 (Poligrafkombinat Press). LXIV, 109, [2] pp. : [2] inserted plates, with a portrait and a facsimile of a period autograph document ; 22 cm.
Hardcover. Print run of 5,000 copies.
Binding good: wear and soiling to the boards. Text block good: complete.

The third printed edition of "Didmouraviani" ("The Poem of the Great Mouravi"), the principal seventeenth-century Georgian heroic epic devoted to Giorgi Saakadze (1570-1629), the "Great Mouravi" of Kartli, whose military and political struggle against Safavid and Ottoman power, followed by his fall from favor and exile, made him one of the most fiercely contested figures in early modern Georgian historical memory. The poem was composed in 1681-87 by Ioseb Tpileli, Saakadze's own nephew, a churchman who ended his life as a layman killed in the internal conflict between King Giorgi XI and the rebellious Eristavi of Aragvi. First printed in 1851 by the historian Platon Ioseliani and given a second edition in 1897 by I. Imedashvili and Sp. Chelidze, the poem received its most substantial scholarly treatment in this 1939 edition, prepared with an extensive introductory study (running to sixty-four roman-numbered pages) by Giorgi Leonidze (1899-1966), one of the leading Georgian poets and literary historians of the Soviet era, covering the poem's content, its manuscript tradition, the author's biography, and questions of dating. The volume is illustrated with pictorial endpapers by Lado Gudiashvili (1896-1980), the internationally recognized Georgian modernist painter of the Paris-trained generation, close to Modigliani and the "La Ruche" circle in the 1920s; executed in fine red-line drawing, the endpapers depict mounted warriors in battle and a seated woman playing a stringed instrument beneath a grapevine, framing the epic and lyrical registers of the poem. Two inserted plates reproduce a seventeenth-century portrait of Saakadze after the album of the Italian missionary Cristoforo Castelli and a facsimile of a period autograph document. As the first scholarly edition of one of Georgian literature's foundational heroic epics, carrying an authenticated Gudiashvili illustration, the volume is of strong interest to collectors of both Georgian literary history and Georgian modernist book art.