Vale Madeleine Wickham (Sophie Kinsella)

UK author Madeleine Wickham, known by her pen name Sophie Kinsella, has died, aged 55.

Penguin Random House writes:

Madeleine, known to everyone as Maddy, wrote her first novel under her real name aged 24, whilst working as a financial journalist. The Tennis Party [Black Swan, 2011] was an immediate success, a top 10 bestseller hailed by critics and the public alike. She went on to publish 6 more novels as Madeleine Wickham. Five years later, writing as Sophie Kinsella, she published the groundbreaking The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic [Black Swan, 2012], which introduced readers to the beloved Becky Bloomwood, a character for our times, funny, feisty and without a trace of guile. Over the next 25 years, Maddy would write 8 further Shopaholic novels and another 18 books, including one YA novel and 4 children’s books. Over the course of her career, she has sold over 50 million copies of her books in over 60 countries and has been translated into 40 languages.

While she is known as the “queen of happy endings”, Maddy also defined and elevated romantic comedy by populating her stories with real-life issues that combined wit, emotional depth and societal insight. Her distinctive voice and style brought her readers from a wide demographic across the world. Her most recent book, published in 2024, was the extraordinary novella, What Does It Feel Like? [Penguin], a poignant and witty account of her cancer journey which was miraculously written after her surgery and which went on to be another instant Sunday Times bestseller.

Category: Obituaries