ANSTEY, CHRISTOPHER (1724-1805), English poet, was the son of the rector
of Brinkley, Cambridgeshire, where he was born on the 31st of October
1724. He was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, where he
distinguished himself for his Latin verses. He became a fellow of his
college (1745); but the degree of M.A. was withheld from him, owing to
the offence caused by a speech made by him beginning: "Doctores sine
doctrina, magistri artium sine artibus, et baccalaurei baculo potius
quam lauro digni." In 1754 he succeeded to the family estates and left
Cambridge; and two years later he married the daughter of Felix Calvert
of Albury Hall, Herts. For some time Anstey published nothing of any
note, though he cultivated letters as well as his estates. Some visits
to Bath, however, where later, in 1770, he made his permanent home,
resulted in 1766 in his famous rhymed letters, _The New Bath Guide_ or
_Memoirs of the B ... r ... d_ [_Blunderhead_] _Family_..., which had
immediate success, and was enthusiastically praised for its original
kind of humour by Walpole and Gray. The _Election Ball, in Poetical
Letters from Mr Inkle at Bath to his Wife at Gloucester_ (1776)
sustained the reputation won by the Guide. Anstey's other productions in
verse and prose are now forgotten. He died on the 3rd of August 1805.
His _Poetical Works_ were collected in 1808 (2 vols.) by the author's
son John (d. 1819), himself author of _The Pleader's Guide_ (1796), in
the same vein with the _New Bath Guide_.

ANSTRUTHER (locally pronounced _Anster_), a seaport of Fifeshire,
Scotland. It comprises the royal and police burghs of Anstruther Easter
(pop. 1190), Anstruther Wester (501) and Kilrenny (2542), and lies 9 m.
S.S.E. of St Andrews, having a station on the North British railway
company's branch line from Thornton Junction to St Andrews. The chief
industries include coast and deep-sea fisheries, shipbuilding, tanning,
the making of cod-liver oil and fish-curing. The harbour was completed
in 1877 at a cost of L80,000. The two Anstruthers are divided only by a
small stream called Dreel Burn. James Melville (1556-1614), nephew of
the more celebrated reformer, Andrew Melville, who was minister of
Kilrenny, has given in his _Diary_ a graphic account of the arrival at
Anstruther of a weatherbound ship of the Armada, and the tradition of
the intermixture of Spanish and Fifeshire blood still prevails in the
district. Anstruther fair suppl