12 Facts About Christopher Anstey

Christopher Anstey was an English poet who wrote in Latin.

Christopher Anstey was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, where he distinguished himself for his Latin verses.

In 1754, having succeeded to the prosperous family estates, Anstey withdrew from the university.

Christopher Anstey's family grew to include thirteen children, eight of whom survived him.

Later Christopher Anstey composed a work in the same vein, An Election Ball, in Poetical Letters from Mr Inkle at Bath to his Wife at Gloucester, published in 1776.

Poetry in Latin makes up only a quarter of Christopher Anstey's published output, but his poetical career both began and ended with it.

Christopher Anstey's first major work was a translation undertaken in collaboration with his friend William Hayward Roberts, a Fellow at King's College at the time, and published anonymously in 1762.

Christopher Anstey was principally known for his long epistolary poem, The New Bath Guide.

When Christopher Anstey returned to a burlesque of Bath society a decade later in An Electoral Ball, it allowed him to embroider on some of his earlier themes.

Christopher Anstey was the first to make tourism a poetic subject since the pilgrimage depicted by Thomas Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales.

The epistolary mode which Christopher Anstey chose for his characters allowed their different voices to be distinguished in the same way as Chaucer's were through their narratives.

Several more authors had rushed in where Christopher Anstey had feared to tread and adapted his style, and even his characters, to political themes.