Sophie Kinsella, the best-selling British author best known for her series of breezy Shopaholic novels, the first two of which were adapted for a Disney movie that starred Isla Fisher, died Wednesday. She was 55.
Kinsella’s family announced her death in an Instagram post. She revealed in April 2024 that said she had been diagnosed at the end of 2022 with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer.
“She died peacefully, with her final days filled with her true loves: family and music and warmth and Christmas and joy,” they wrote.
The prolific Kinsella wrote about 30 books that sold more than 45 million copies in 60-plus countries, according to her website. Her first novel, The Tennis Party, was published in 1995; her most recent effort, The Burnout, was released in October 2023.
The first of her 10 Shopaholic novels, The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic, hit bookstores in 2000 and introduced readers to the feisty, Surrey-born Becky Bloomwood, a writer for Successful Saving magazine whose addiction to clothes shopping has her mired in debt.
The 2009 film Confessions of a Shopaholic, directed by P.J. Hogan and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, is set in Manhattan, as Becky had moved there in 2001’s Shopaholic Abroad.
Kinsella’s 2003 novel, Can You Keep a Secret?, was used for a 2019 indie romantic comedy of the same name that starred Alexandra Daddario and Tyler Hoechlin and was directed by Elise Duran.
A movie starring Dakota Fanning based on Kinsella’s 2008 novel, Remember Me? was set in motion in 2022, THR reported. That one is centered on a woman with amnesia who has no idea how she went from being a lonely loser to a successful boss with the perfect life — but is her life really that ideal?
Kinsella said her inspiration was Jane Austen, who “loves a flawed heroine as much as I do,” she told The Washington Post in 2012.
“Personally, when I read books about women who fly around the world, have amazing sex and buy up companies, I never relate,” she said. “I try to write heroines that we relate to. You empathize with people when you feel sorry for them or feel like you’ve been in their place.”
Madeleine Sophie Wickham was born in London on Dec. 12, 1969, and raised in the Wimbledon area. Her parents, David and Patricia, were educators. (Kinsella created her pen name out of her middle name and her mother’s maiden name).
A pianist in her teens, Kinsella attended the Sherbourne School for Girls in Dorset, then enrolled at Oxford to pursue a degree in music. But after a year, she switched to the university’s philosophy, politics and economics program.
She landed her first job out of school as a junior assistant on a magazine for retirees, and while working as a financial journalist during the day, she wrote The Tennis Party on nights and weekends. Published in 1995, it revolved around rich, squabbling friends who gather for a weekend at a country estate.
“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.’”
From 1996-2000, she had one novel published a year for five years — A Desirable Residence, Swimming Pool Sunday, The Gatecrasher, The Wedding Girl and Cocktails for Three.
“And then I got to the age of 29 or 30, and I thought, OK, now without being defensive, I will write a silly book about things I know and just make it funny and ridiculous,” she said. “And if it fails, that’s OK.”
She submitted the manuscript for The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic under the name Sophie Kinsella, not telling her publisher that it has been written by Madeleine Wickham.
Her 10th Shopaholic book, Christmas Shopaholic, was published in 2019.
Her other work included 2006’s The Undomestic Goddess, 2009’s Twenties Girl, 2011’s I’ve Got Your Number, 2015’s Finding Audrey and 2018’s Fairy Mom and Me.
Survivors include her husband, Henry Wickham (a former schoolmaster and then her manager, they met on her first night at Oxford and married in 1991); their children, Freddy, Hugo, Oscar, Rex and Sybella; and her younger sisters, fellow writers Gemma Townley and Abigail Townley.
“We can’t imagine what life will be like without her radiance and love of life,” her 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.”
Most of the leading ladies in Kinsella’s romantic comedies were single women in their 20s or 30s, just getting started in their careers.
“A friend of mine asked me just the other day — she said, ‘How do you put yourself back?’” Kinsella said in a 2021 interview with Glamour. “I feel like I have a channel in my brain that just transports me back to that state of life where everything [awaits]. I think there’s something so magical about the glimmering horizon.”
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