"Queen of Romantic Comedy"— 'Confessions of a Shopaholic' Author Has Died of Cancer at 55
Known as Sophie Kinsella, Madeleine Wickham wrote more than 30 books selling over 45 million copies.
Madeleine Wickham, the author who enchanted millions with her bestselling novel Confessions of a Shopaholic—written under the pen name Sophie Kinsella—has died of cancer, her family announced on Wednesday. She was 55.
Wickham wrote more than 30 books for children, teenagers and adults during her career, selling over 45 million copies and earning her a reputation for being the “queen of romantic comedy,” in novelist Jojo Moyes’s words.
In an Instagram post on Wednesday, her family wrote that she had died peacefully “with her final days filled with her true loves: family and music and warmth and Christmas and joy.”
In April last year, Wickham announced that she was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer in 2022.
“We can’t imagine what life will be like without her radiance and love of life,” the family wrote. “Despite her illness, which she bore with unimaginable courage, Sophie counted herself truly blessed – to have such wonderful family and friends, and to have had the extraordinary success of her writing career. She took nothing for granted and was forever grateful for the love she received.”
Wickham was born in 1969 in London. She studied at Oxford and then became a financial journalist but never expressed a passion for the job. On her daily commute, she devoured paperback novels, igniting a desire in her to want to try her hand at writing her own.
She penned her first novel, “The Tennis Party,” when she was 24. Between 1995 and 2001, she subsequently published six more novels—all under her real name, Madeleine Wickham.
She then decided to switch to a pen name, Sophie Kinsella, intent on writing books that were stylistically different and not as serious.
According to the Guardian, Wickham submitted her first manuscript as Sophie Kinsella—titled The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic—without telling publishers her real name. The book, published in some countries as Confessions of a Shopaholic, hit shelves in 2000 and would become the first of 10 books in the Shopaholic series.
She wrote other books outside of the series. Her most recent, published in 2023, is titled “The Burnout,” which she said was inspired by her own experience of burnout and seeing it all around her.
Wickham is survived by her husband Henry, who she met at university, and their five children.
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