Anstey, F. (pseudonym of Thomas Anstey Guthrie, 1856–1934), author of stories of fantasy and humour. Vice‐Versa (1882), his best‐known work, was also his first, begun when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge. Subtitled ‘A Lesson to Fathers’, it shows the consequences of rashly wishing to be a boy again. Paul Bultitude unwittingly holds a magical talisman as he lectures his son Dick on his good fortune to be going back to school. He finds himself transformed into Dick, while Dick becomes his father. Paul has to endure the humiliating miseries of Dr Grimstone's school, but when he does escape, his son is reluctant to reverse the situation. No subsequent Anstey book had the success of Vice‐Versa, though The Brass Bottle (1900) equals it in humour. Here a young architect inadvertently releases a powerful jinn from a bottle, and has to endure the jinn's misguided efforts to reward him. Anstey frequently used the device of the disastrous intrusion of magic into everyday life. The Tinted Venus (1885) deals with a statue of Aphrodite that comes to life and nearly wrecks a hairdresser's long‐standing romantic attachment; A Fallen Idol (1886) is about the repercussions that ensue when the image of an ancient Indian guru who was also a practical joker is acquired by a worthy young artist in Victorian London. His last book, In Brief Authority (1915), about a nouveau riche family who get whisked off to rule Fairyland, was written when readers' taste for magic had evaporated.
— Gillian Avery
