Madeleine Wickham, the British author who wrote the “Confessions of a Shopaholic” novel series under the pen name Sophie Kinsella, becoming an international sensation, died on Wednesday. She was 55.
Her family announced her death in a post on her Instagram page.
Ms. Wickham had been diagnosed with a glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, in 2022. She announced the diagnosis in a social media post in April 2024.
Ms. Wickham became a force in commercial fiction upon the release of “The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic,” (released as “Confessions of a Shopaholic” in the United States) in 2000. The book introduced audiences to the series heroine, Rebecca Bloomwood, a financial journalist who has an uncontrollable and comedic urge for retail consumption.
The idea for the first “Shopaholic” novel came in 1999, when Ms. Wickham was stunned by a credit-card bill she received in the mail.
“My first thought was, ‘I don’t remember buying this or that, therefore I must have been defrauded,’” Ms. Wickham told The Times Colonist in 2007. “I suddenly saw the potential of shopping as a story to write about.”
She adopted the pen name Sophie Kinsella, a combination of her middle name and her mother’s maiden name, for what she had believed would be a one-off side project.
“I thought, if it’s a complete flop, then it will have nothing whatsoever to do with me,” she told The Toronto Star in 2014.
Far from flopping, the works under her pen name came to define Ms. Wickham’s career. She wrote nine “Shopaholic” novels, which sold tens of millions of copies and were translated into dozens of languages. The first two novels in the series were adapted into “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” a 2009 film starring Isla Fisher. A 2003 book penned under the Sophie Kinsella moniker — “Can You Keep A Secret?” — was turned into a 2019 feature film of the same name, starring Alexandra Daddario.
She is survived by her husband, Henry Wickham, and their five children: Freddy, Hugo, Oscar, Rex and Sybella.
A full obituary will be published later.
Sopan Deb is a Times reporter covering breaking news and culture.
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