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Bottled Trout and Polo

[Edmund] Blampied

This is Blampied's only book, a collection of 94 cartoons drawn in charcoal, pencil, ink and wash, and printed on good quality paper. Some of the cartoons have printed captions. The origin of the title is unknown. It was used by the author David Francis is his 2016 novel Wedding Bush Road:

In the thickening heat and the silence between us, I eat without waiting, my attention drawn to the array of portraits watching down from the walls, my shovel-jawed grandfather, all bottled trout and polo, as my mother once called him . . .

Whether this expression was derived from Blampied's book or was once used, I don't know, but I can find no reference to it other than because of Blampied's book, so I suspect that it is original.

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Section of title page. The drawing is printed. (click to enlarge)

Notes: The book was probably issued in December 1936 as copies inscribed by Blampied and dated 12th and 15th have been seen. The copies in the University of Oxford and the National Library of Wales are dated [1937] presumably because they didn't receive their copies until then. There are also copies at Trinity College, Dublin; Keele University; Free University of Amsterdam; and the British Library.

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