British author Madeleine Wickham, better known for her pen name Sophie Kinsella and bestselling novel Confessions of a Shopaholic, died December 10. She was 55. The Guardian reported that 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 45 million copies."
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| Sophie Kinsella | |
Wickham studied music at New College, Oxford, before switching to philosophy, politics and economics. After graduation, she became a financial journalist, but said she found the job dull. She wrote The Tennis Party, her first novel, at 24.
"My overriding concern was that I didn't write the autobiographical first novel," she 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."
She went on to write six more novels under her own name between 1995 and 2001, including Cocktails for Three, The Wedding Girl, Sleeping Arrangements, and The Gatecrasher.
Wickham submitted her first manuscript written as Sophie Kinsella, The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic, without revealing her identity to her publishers. The Guardian noted that the novel--published as Confessions of a Shopaholic in some countries--was released in 2000 and became the first of 10 installments in the Shopaholic series, with the first and second novels being adapted into films.
Beginning in 2003, she wrote standalone novels as Sophie Kinsella, including Can You Keep a Secret?, The Undomestic Goddess, Remember Me?, and, most recently, The Burnout (2023). She also created the children's book series Mummy Fairy and Me, published between 2018 and 2020, as well as a YA novel, Finding Audrey (2015).
Araminta Whitley and Marina de Pass, her agents at the Soho Agency, told the Bookseller that Wickham was "an intelligent, imaginative, loving, and irreverent woman who valued the deeply connective power of fiction. She had a rare gift for creating emotionally resonant protagonists and stories that spoke to, and entertained, readers wherever they were in the world and whatever challenges they faced. She also had an unmatched wit and ability to find the funny side. Comedy, for her, was both an art form and an intellectual pursuit and she instinctively understood that it is often a tightrope act of balancing light with dark. Her readers, and we include ourselves in that, felt seen and understood by her protagonists and their stories."
Bill Scott-Kerr, publisher at Transworld, her publisher for the past 30 years, said: "I have had the true pleasure of knowing Maddy for the past three decades. Transworld have been lucky enough to publish every one of her adult novels. She was our author, our cheerleader, our fellow conspirator and our friend.... Maddy leaves behind a glorious and indelible legacy: a unique voice, an unquenchable spirit, a goodness of intent and a body of work that will continue to inspire us to reach higher and be better, just like so many of her characters."