Amelia Blanford Edwards (1831-1892), author of the hugely successful illustrated travelogue, A Thousand Miles up the Nile—still in print and regularly reprinted—was so much more than a pioneer of British Egyptology. She was a writer, musician, artist, activist, and explorer. She is remembered for different reasons, by different people, in different ways. This volume offers new revelations about Amelia’s private life and her relationships with women that led her, ultimately, to the founding of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society).

What circumstances in her life led Amelia Edwards to Egypt and what happened after her famous journey ‘A Thousand Miles Up the Nile’? To answer these questions, Carl Graves navigates Amelia’s complicated personal life, unpacking the events that surrounded the foundation of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society). Her legacy in Egyptology ends with the equally intriguing journey of an oil painting by Florence Blakiston Attwood-Mathews, now in the collection of the Society. But who really is the woman in the painting?