F Anstey

Writer, born in London, UK. He studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and in 1880 was called to the bar. A whimsical humorist, he wrote Vice Versa (1882), The Brass Bottle (1900), and many other novels and dialogues. He also joined the staff of Punch (1887–1930).

Thomas Anstey Guthrie (8 August 1856 - March 10, 1934), was an English novelist and journalist, who wrote his comic novels under the pseudonym F. but, in spite of its excellence, he 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.

Vice Versa has been filmed many times, but another of his novels, The Brass Bottle, has also been filmed more than once, most recently in a then-very updated version in 1964. This latest version starred Tony Randall, Barbara Eden, and Burl Ives as a genie who turns Randall's life upside down, but it led the same year to the idea of Barbara Eden being cast in the title role in the hit TV series I Dream of Jeannie.

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 1901 his successful farce The Man from Blankleys, based on a story which originally appeared in Punch, was first produced at the Prince of Wales Theatre, in London.