Thomas Anstey Guthrie was an English writer best known for his humorous novel Vice Versa, about a boarding school child and his father who switch identities. The Tinted Venus, as well as other funny parodies in Punch magazine, reinforced his reputation. He was born in Kensington, London, to organist and composer Augusta Amherst Austen and Thomas Anstey Guthrie. He was educated at King's College School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and admitted to the bar in 1880. Guthrie's younger brother, Leonard Guthrie (1858-1918), was a physician. The widespread success of his story Vice Versa (1882), with its topsy-turvy replacement of a father for his schoolboy son, established him as an innovative comedian. In 1883, he wrote a serious book, The Giant's Robe, which George Gissing called'very poor stuff'. Anstey learned (again in 1889 with The Pariah) that the public preferred to consider him as a comic rather than a serious author. As a result, his fame was reinforced by The Black Poodle (1884), The Tinted Venus (1885), A Fallen Idol (1886), and other masterpieces.
