User blog:Matthew Babe Stevenson/Literary allusions

These are my proposed additions to Literary Allusions in Turtledove's Work.

Alexander Afanasyev
Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev (Александр Николаевич Афанасьев) (23 July [O.S. 11 July] 1826 — 5 October [O.S. 23 September] 1871) 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 1855–67, earning him the reputation as being the Russian counterpart to the Brothers Grimm. Most of the definitive Baba Yaga legends were first transcribed by Afanasyev. Arguably the internationally best-known example is "Vasilisa the Beautiful", wherein an indentured servant (whose biography resembles both Cinderella and Hansel & Gretel at different turns) escapes from her captivity in the izbushka with the help of small magical creatures and her own cleverness and kindness. Another character from the Yaga stories is Prince Dmitri, enchanted into the form of a hedgehog, whose story is sometimes conflated with Vasilisa's.

A large part of Laura Frankos' "Slue-Foot Sue and the Witch in the Woods" is a retelling of "Vasilisa the Beautiful," with the American adventurer Slue-foot Sue substituting for the titular servant. Sue meets Prince Dmitri, who is confirmed to be from the House of Romanov for the purpose of rehashing a well-worn Anglo-Russian pun.

Edward O'Reilly
Edward Sinnott "Tex" O'Reilly (August 15, 1880 – December 9, 1946) was an American soldier, international policeman, journalist and autobiographer. Ironically, his most enduring claim to fame may be for the light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek series of Pecos Bill stories (beginning in 1917), which he claimed were not his own creations, but taken from Texas folklore. No prior cultural reference for Pecos Bill and his costars has ever been found, and O'Reilly is believed by many folklorists to have created them from whole cloth as a kind of "fakelore".

Laura Frankos' Slue-Foot Sue and the Witch in the Woods depicts O'Reilly's characters Pecos Bill, Slue-foot Sue, Rat the snake, and Widow Maker the horse, who are all from the earliest published Bill stories. It also depicts Bean Hole the cook, who was created either by O'Reilly or James Cloyd Bowman, who took over Pecos Bill writing duty after O'Reilly lost interest. Because of the checkered, haphazard publishing protocols of the magazines in which Bill appeared, the chronology of first appearances and correct credits can sometimes be difficult to determine.

Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist, best known for her children's animal fables depicting Peter Rabbit's frequent attempts to trespass in Farmer McGregor's garden.

In The Great War: American Front, when Canada is invaded by the Americans, a soldier named Pierre Lapin, whose name translates as Peter Rabbit, is assigned to protect a farm whose owner is ironically named Arthur McGregor. (While later Southern Victory volumes feature a POV character named Clarence Potter, this seems to be a coincidence unrelated to the earlier Lapin-McGregor reference.)

In Laura Frankos' "A Late Symmer Night's Battle", Mr. Tod the fox, a cavalry mount in the Army of Faerie, shares his name and species with another of Potter's quasi-anthropomorphic heroes.

H.A. Rey
H.A. Rey (Hans Augusto Reyersbach, September 16, 1898 – August 26, 1977) was a German-born American illustrator and author, best known for his series of children's picture books featuring a good-natured, accident-prone pet monkey named Curious George.

In Joe Steele, Charlie Sullivan reads a Curious George book to his son Patrick. Rather than recite a straight reading of the printed text, they turn it into a game of mad libs.