Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev (Afanasief, Afanasiev or Afanas'ev, ) ( — ) was a Russian Slavist and ethnographer who published nearly 600 Russian fairy and folk tales, one of the largest collections of folklore in the world. The first edition of his collection was published in eight volumes from 1855 to 1867, earning him the reputation as being the Russian counterpart to the Brothers Grimm. Life Alexander Afanasyev was born in the town of Boguchar in the Voronezh Governorate of the Russian Empire (modern-day Voronezh Oblast of Russia) into a family of modest means. His mother Varvara Mikhailovna Afanasyeva came from common people. Alexander was her seventh child; she became very ill after giving birth and died by the end of the year. The children were raised by their father Nikolai Ivanovich Afanasyev, a Titular councillor who 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 spent his childhood. He became addicted to reading early in his life, having access to the well-stocked library left by his grandfather (a member of the Russian Bible Society), as well as to various magazines. In 1837 he was sent to the Voronezh male gymnasium, and in 1844 he entered the Law Faculty of the University of Moscow which he finished in 1848. There he attended the lectures of Konstantin Kavelin, Timofey Granovsky, Sergey Solovyov, Stepan Shevyryov, Osip Bodyansky and Fyodor Buslaev. He 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. Despite being one of the most promising students, he failed to become a professor. The conservative Minister of National Enlightenment, Count Sergey Uvarov, who oversaw the final exams, attacked Afanasyev's essay which discussed the role of autocracy in the development of Russian criminal law during the 16th and 17th centuries. 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 Afanasyev worked for the next 13 years. During that time he met many people of science and culture, collected a lot of ancient books and manuscripts that formed a huge library.