author
Waller Ashe
1840–1893
A British Army major who turned recent campaigns into vivid military history, he is best known for books on the Zulu War and the Kandahar campaign. His work draws on the perspective of a serving officer and has remained of interest to readers of Victorian warfare.
1 Audiobook
The Story of the Zulu Campaign
by Waller Ashe, Edmund Verney Wyatt-Edgell
About the author
Major Waller Ashe was a British Army officer and military writer, identified in his 1880 book The Story of the Zulu Campaign as "Late King's Dragoon Guards" and also credited there as the author of The Military Institutions of France. He is associated most closely with two military works that still circulate today: The Story of the Zulu Campaign (1880), written with E. V. Wyatt-Edgell, and Personal Records of the Kandahar Campaign (1881), which he edited.
His writing sits close to the events it describes. In the case of The Story of the Zulu Campaign, later publishers and booksellers note that Ashe drew on reports, notes, and correspondence from officers involved in the war, helping give the book the feel of a near-contemporary account rather than a distant history. That mix of military experience and documentary detail is a big part of why his books are still remembered by readers interested in the campaigns of the British Empire.
The available records found here are limited, but they do point to the outline of his later life: a parliamentary record from 1882 refers to Major Waller Ashe as formerly of the King's Dragoon Guards and formerly deputy governor of the general prison at Perth in Scotland, while a burial record places his death in Putney, London, in March 1893 at age 53. No clearly verified portrait turned up in the sources I could confirm.