Confessions of a Shopaholic novelist Sophie Kinsella dies aged 55 | Books

Madeleine Wickham, known for writing the bestselling novel Confessions of a Shopaholic under her pen name Sophie Kinsella, has died aged 55.

Wickham, dubbed “the queen of romantic comedy” by novelist Jojo Moyes, wrote more than 30 books for adults, children and teenagers, which have sold more than 45m copies.

In April 2024, Wickham announced that she was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, at the end of 2022, and had undergone radiotherapy and chemotherapy after surgery.

Wickham was born in London in 1969. She studied music at New College, Oxford, before switching to Philosophy, Politics and Economics. After graduation, she became a financial journalist, but she said she found the job dull. During the long commute to central London, she would read paperbacks by the likes of Mary Wesley and Joanna Trollope, and began wanting to write a book.

At 24, she wrote her first novel, The Tennis Party, about a group of friends who take part in a weekend tournament. “My overriding concern was that I didn’t write the autobiographical first novel,” Wickham told the Guardian in 2012. “I was so, so determined not to write about a 24-year-old journalist. It was going to have male characters, and middle-aged people, so I could say, look, I’m not just writing about my life, I’m a real author.”

The Tennis Party was the first of seven novels Wickham wrote under her real name, published yearly between 1995 and 2001, including Cocktails for Three, The Wedding Girl, Sleeping Arrangements and The Gatecrasher. Sleeping Arrangements was adapted as a musical by Chris Burgess.

The Madeleine Wickham books are “rather different” from her later Sophie Kinsella books, said the author. “They’re a bit more serious, a bit darker and are all ensemble pieces without a main heroine, but groups of characters whose lives interlink in some way.”

Wickham submitted her first manuscript written under the name Sophie Kinsella, The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic, without revealing her identity to her publishers. The book – issued as Confessions of a Shopaholic in some countries – was published in 2000 and became the first of 10 instalments in the Shopaholic series. The stories follow Becky Bloomwood, a financial journalist with a spending problem. “I thought, wait a minute, shopping has become the national pastime, and nobody has written about it,” said Wickham. “It felt very much like an experimental project.”

The series’ first and second novels – the latter titled Shopaholic Abroad – were adapted for film. Confessions of a Shopaholic, directed by PJ Hogan and starring Isla Fisher and Hugh Dancy, was released in 2009.

Beginning in 2003, Wickham also published standalone novels as Sophie Kinsella. These include Can You Keep a Secret?, The Undomestic Goddess and Remember Me?. Her most recent standalone, published in 2023, is titled The Burnout, which she was inspired to write after experiencing it herself and seeing it “around [her] everywhere”. Protagonist Sasha goes to a Devon beach resort she loved as a child to recuperate from burnout, but finds the once grand hotel now dilapidated, and has to share the beach with the grumpy Finn.

“The wonderful response to The Burnout has really buoyed me up during a difficult time,” wrote Wickham in the announcement of her cancer diagnosis. Public messages of support came from Fisher, who played Becky in Confessions of a Shopaholic, as well as romance writer Moyes and thriller writer Gillian McAllister.

Wickham’s novels have often been classified as “chick lit”, owing to the romcom-esque situations her often ditzy heroines find themselves in. Yet Wickham considered the term “chick lit” to mean “third-person contemporary funny” novels. “You can be highly intelligent, and also ditzy and klutzy,” said Wickham. “You can be unable to cook, you can like lipstick. And I think it’s more realistic to represent women having all these facets.”

Wickham also created the children’s book series Mummy Fairy and Me, published between 2018 and 2020. In 2015, she wrote a young adult novel, Finding Audrey, about a teenage girl with social anxiety.

Wickham met her husband, Henry Wickham, on her first night at Oxford University, and married him when she was 21. She is survived by her husband and their five children.