author
Rollo Gillespie Burslem
A 19th-century British soldier and travel writer, he is best remembered for a firsthand account of Afghanistan during the First Anglo-Afghan War. His surviving work offers readers a vivid glimpse of frontier travel, military life, and the landscapes beyond Kabul.
1 Audiobook
A Peep into Toorkisthan
by Rollo Gillespie Burslem
About the author
Born in 1813 and dying in 1896, Rollo Gillespie Burslem was a British army officer whose name is most closely linked with A Peep into Toorkisthan. Library of Congress records describe him as serving in the 13th Prince Albert's Light Infantry Regiment, part of the Anglo-Indian Army of the Indus during the early phase of the First Anglo-Afghan War.
His book grew out of a journey he made in the summer of 1840, when he traveled from Kabul with Lieutenant Sturt to survey passes of the Hindu Kush. That experience gave his writing its distinctive character: part travel narrative, part military observation, and part eyewitness record of a region that was little known to many British readers at the time.
Today, Burslem is remembered less as a major literary figure than as a valuable firsthand voice from a turbulent period in Afghan and British imperial history. His work remains of interest to readers drawn to exploration, nineteenth-century travel writing, and on-the-ground accounts of Central Asia.