F. Anstey

Sir Thomas Anstey Guthrie (8 August 1856 – 10 March 1934) was an English writer (writing as F. Anstey or F. T. Anstey), most noted for his comic novel Vice Versa about a boarding-school boy and his father exchanging identities. His reputation was confirmed by The Tinted Venus and many humorous parodies in Punch magazine.

Early life and family

He was born in Kensington, London, to Augusta Amherst Austen, an organist and composer, and Thomas Anstey Guthrie. He was educated at King's College School and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and was called to the bar in 1880.

Guthrie's younger brother was the physician Leonard Guthrie (1858–1918).

Writing career

The popular success of his story Vice Versa (1882) with its topsy turvy substitution of a father for his schoolboy son, at once made his reputation as a humorist of an original type. In 1883, he published a serious novel, The Giant's Robe, which George Gissing described as 'very poor stuff'. Anstey discovered (and again in 1889 with The Pariah) that it was not as a serious novelist but as a humorist that the public insisted on regarding him. As such, his reputation was further confirmed by The Black Poodle (1884), The Tinted Venus (1885), A Fallen Idol (1886), and other works.

Guthrie became an important member of the staff of Punch magazine, in which his voces populi and his humorous parodies of a reciter's stock-piece (Burglar Bill, &c.) represent his best work. In 1903, his successful farce The Man from Blankley's based on a story that originally appeared in Punch, was first produced by Sir Charles Hawtrey at the Prince of Wales Theatre, in London. It starred Hawtrey, Arthur Playfair and Faith Stone. After London, it played in New York, Washington DC, Detroit and Chicago. He wrote Only Toys (1903) and Salted Almonds (1906).