13 Facts About Alexander Afanasyev

Alexander Afanasyev was born in the town of Boguchar in the Voronezh Governorate of the Russian Empire into a family of modest means.

The children were raised by their father Nikolai Ivanovich Afanasyev, who had the rank of titular councillor and served as a prosecutor's assistant on probable causes and whom Alexander described as a man of high intellectual and moral qualities, "deservedly known as the smartest person in the whole uyezd".

In three years the family moved to Bobrov, Voronezh where Alexander Afanasyev spent his childhood.

Alexander Afanasyev became addicted to reading early in his life, having access to the well-stocked library left by his grandfather, as well as to various magazines.

Alexander Afanasyev published a series of articles on government economy during the times of Peter the Great, on the Pskov Judicial Charter and other topics in the Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski magazines.

In 1849 Konstantin Kavelin helped him to get a place at the Moscow's Main Archive Directorate under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire, and here Alexander Afanasyev worked for the next 13 years.

Alexander Afanasyev's flat was searched, and while nothing was revealed, he still lost his place at the Moscow Archives.

Alexander Afanasyev died in Moscow aged 45, suffering from tuberculosis.

Alexander Afanasyev became interested in old Russian and Slav traditions and stories in the 1850s.

Alexander Afanasyev was then asked by the Russian Geographical Society of Saint Petersburg to publish the folktales archives that the Society had been in possession of for about ten years.

Alexander Afanasyev added to them the enormous collection of Vladimir Dal, from which he kept 148 numbers, finding the other ones too distorted, his own collection, and a few other collections.

Alexander Afanasyev owes his prominent place in the history of Slavonic philology chiefly to these Russian Fairy Tales, published between 1855 and 1863, and inspired by the famous collection of the Brothers Grimm.

Alexander Afanasyev had at his disposal a lot of contributors, he tried to give the source and place where the tale was told, he never tried to give any definitive version of a folktale: so, if he gathered seven versions of one folk type, he edited them all.