Augusta Tucker Townsend, a best-selling author who brought national attention to the Johns Hopkins Medical School with the novel "Miss Susie Slagle's," died of congestive heart failure Friday at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Gaithersburg. She was 94.

A daughter of the Deep South, the former Augusta Tucker moved to Baltimore during the Depression to be part of a literary circle that included Gerald Johnson, Ogden Nash, R. P. Harriss and H. L. Mencken.

Besides novels and short stories, Mrs. Townsend also wrote a guide, "It Happened at Hopkins: A Teaching Hospital," and more than 300 newspaper and magazine feature articles, book reviews and opinion-editorials. A prolific contributing writer to The Sun and The Evening Sun, she was proud that she had work published in those newspapers every decade from the 1920s to the 1990s.

"She was a lady of great independence and great spirit -- an inquisitive observer of the human scene," said H. Stewart Cobb Jr., her nephew and guardian. "She was very famous at Hopkins" and for many years, administrators "reserved a front-row seat for her at all the graduations and dedications."

James Bready, book columnist for The Sun, remembers her as "a hard worker, a thorough researcher and a great storyteller with a good knowledge of who's who in Baltimore."

When "Miss Susie Slagle's" reached the best-seller list, she became "a most happy and willing celebrity," Mr. Bready said.

"She became a town personage after the sudden and startling success of this book. It was the book that persuaded students to apply to Hopkins. It was the best possible propaganda for this institution. Hopkins gave her her own white coat with her name sewn above the breast pocket, doctor-style."

Born in St. Francisville, La., Mrs. Townsend saw much of the United States at an early age. Her father was a fifth-generation minister, and he relocated the family every few years as he moved from church to church. She attended a private grammar school in Alabama called Miss Anna Gee's and the Barton Academy, a public high school in Mobile, Ala., where she graduated in 1921.

After a brief stint as a teacher, she began supporting herself writing free-lance articles for magazines and newspapers. By the 1930s, her nephew said, she had moved to Baltimore because it was a center of literary activity. She wrote mystery stories under a pen name, including "The Hospital Murders," "The Chess Murders" and "Murder Without a Weapon."

An editor in New York encouraged her to write a medical novel, setting the stage for her best-seller.

Published by Harper and Bros. in 1939, "Miss Susie Slagle's" told of the life of medical students at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who resided in a nearby boarding house before World War I -- and the trials and tribulations of becoming a doctor. A New York Times best-seller, it had 23 printings in four languages.

In 1945, the book became a movie produced by John Houseman and starring Veronica Lake, Sonny Tufts, Joan Caulfield, Lillian Gish and Lloyd Bridges, but references to Hopkins were deleted. By then, Mrs. Townsend had published a "prequel" titled "The Man Miss Susie Loved."

One impressive aspect of Mrs. Townsend's writing, Mr. Bready said, is that though she never went beyond high school, she wrote about medicine "as if she were a physician herself." Part of her secret, he said, was that "she got someone to let her live with nurses in New York City, and that's how she learned the language."

In 1929, she married Donald Watts, who died in a car accident in 1932.

In 1943, she married Richard E. Townsend, an engineer, philatelist and authority on Americana.

The Townsends lived in Annapolis for many years. After her husband died in 1975, Mrs. Townsend lived at 100 W. University Parkway, near Hopkins' Homewood campus. For many years, she was a familiar sight at Hopkins, riding her bike or walking around the track for exercise.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete yesterday.

Mrs. Townsend is survived by many nieces and nephews.