F. ANSTEY
Author biography:
F. Anstey [Thomas Anstey Guthrie] (1856-1934)
The son of a London tailor, Anstey studied to be a lawyer (though he never practised). Instead he started publishing stories in the late 1870s. He had an early ‘hit’ with the comic—and subsequently much-filmed—novel Vice Versa (1882) in which a father and son magically change bodies for a week. (The name “F. Anstey” is sometimes thought to be a play on the word “fantasy.”) On the basis of this Anstey was invited to become a contributor for Punch by its editor F. C. Burnand and this became the centre of his literary work. Burglar Bill (1882) and Mr. Punch’s Model Music Hall (1892) both appeared in the magazine. Anstey found his niche with a series of humorous novels: The Tinted Venus (1885), A Fallen Idol (1886) and The Brass Bottle (1900). Anstey also wrote some serious fiction: The Pariah, about a well-off but low born young man who tries to enter high-society but encounters only disdain, and The Statement of Stella Maberly (1897), a psychological thriller about schizophrenia and hallucination. In later life, Anstey spent a good deal of time overseeing dramatizations of his works, and later film adaptations.
Anstey had no pretensions to being seen as a “great” author. In A Long Retrospect he wrote: “my life has had no adventures, and no vicissitudes; such incidents as have happened in it have been the experiences of any author who has been fairly popular in his day and has enjoyed his work.” He died of pneumonia in 1934.
- contributed by Prof. Andrew Maunder
Titles by this author:
F. Anstey [Thomas Anstey Guthrie] (1856-1934)
The son of a London tailor, Anstey studied to be a lawyer (though he never practised). Instead he started publishing stories in the late 1870s. He had an early ‘hit’ with the comic—and subsequently much-filmed—novel Vice Versa (1882) in which a father and son magically change bodies for a week. (The name “F. Anstey” is sometimes thought to be a play on the word “fantasy.”) On the basis of this Anstey was invited to become a contributor for Punch by its editor F. C. Burnand and this became the centre of his literary work. Burglar Bill (1882) and Mr. Punch’s Model Music Hall (1892) both appeared in the magazine. Anstey found his niche with a series of humorous novels: The Tinted Venus (1885), A Fallen Idol (1886) and The Brass Bottle (1900). Anstey also wrote some serious fiction: The Pariah, about a well-off but low born young man who tries to enter high-society but encounters only disdain, and The Statement of Stella Maberly (1897), a psychological thriller about schizophrenia and hallucination. In later life, Anstey spent a good deal of time overseeing dramatizations of his works, and later film adaptations.
Anstey had no pretensions to being seen as a “great” author. In A Long Retrospect he wrote: “my life has had no adventures, and no vicissitudes; such incidents as have happened in it have been the experiences of any author who has been fairly popular in his day and has enjoyed his work.” He died of pneumonia in 1934.
- contributed by Prof. Andrew Maunder
Titles by this author:
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