Elizabeth Peters (the pen name of Egyptologist Barbara Mertz), creator of the popular Amelia Peabody mystery series, delivered the annual Judith Austin Memorial Lecture at the Library of Congress on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2003. In the lecture, titled “Amelia Peabody’s Egypt,” Peters discussed her latest book, her beloved main characters the Emersons, and Egypt past and present. The lecture will be followed by a book-signing.

Under the pen name Elizabeth Peters, Mertz has written 15 historical mysteries set in Egypt featuring Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson, a husband-and-wife team of Victorian Egyptologists. In addition to the Amelia Peabody series, she has written approximately 50 thrillers under the pen names of Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels. In real life, she is an expert on Egypt who holds a Ph.D. in the subject from the University of Chicago and is the author (writing under her own name) of two important scholarly works on Egyptology (“Red Land, Black Land: The World of the Ancient Egyptians,” and “Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs: The Story of Egyptology”).

This lecture series was established by the Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Division as a tribute to Judith Austin and her many years of service to the Library of Congress.