Sophie Kinsella, who has died of a brain tumour aged 55, was one of Britain’s most successful novelists, selling more than 50 million copies of her books, including the globally successful Shopaholic series. Through three decades she retained a loyal and passionate readership with her deceptively light and intricately plotted comic novels.
Like her best-known heroine, Becky Bloomwood, Kinsella began her writing career in financial journalism, but, realising she was uninspired (and probably not very good at it), she wrote a book, The Tennis Party, that was published in 1995, when she was 25, under her given name, Madeleine Wickham (“Maddy”). This was followed by five subsequent standalone “Aga sagas”, which all achieved moderate chart success and critical acclaim.
But in 1998, struck by an image of a horrified woman confronting a credit card bill with little idea of how her addictions had landed her there, she came up with a very different kind of protagonist and story, and changed her own fortunes completely. Becky Bloomwood was a screwball heroine in the 1940s mould who, despite making repeated financial and emotional mistakes, manages to win not just the man but the readers’ sympathies.
The ensuing romcom was published under the name Sophie Kinsella, a combination of her middle name and her mother’s maiden name. “I thought, if it’s a complete flop, then it will have nothing whatsoever to do with me,” she said afterwards, and she even wore sunglasses in her author picture in a comedic attempt to disguise herself. But the chaotic heroine, who she admitted was loosely inspired by her own experiences and klutziness, became swiftly beloved of millions of readers, and Confessions of a Shopaholic spawned a number of sequels, including Shopaholic Abroad (one of the UK’s top-selling novels in 2002), Shopaholic and Sister (2004) and Shopaholic and Baby (2007).
While the books were criticised by some for allegedly romanticising consumerism, few could argue that they didn’t capture the zeitgeist of the early 2000s, or the lunacy of banks pushing debt at customers. “We all talked about shopping, we went shopping, the store card thing was massive, and I could see the hypocrisy of taking out the credit card, then being shouted at for not paying it off,” Maddy said.
Her stories were, for all their apparent lightness, underpinned by careful characterisation and meticulous plotting. Readers related to her messy, flawed, optimistic heroines: her novels have been sold in more than 60 countries and translated into 40 languages. She branched out into children’s books in 2018 with the Mummy Fairy books, and the young adult novel Finding Audrey (2015), which proved to be ahead of its time in detailing teenage anxiety. While her books were often described as “chick lit”, she disliked the term, preferring the term romcoms. “I’ve never had anyone say to my face, ‘Your books are inferior’,” she once said, “but if people say ‘Your books are beach reads’, I say, ‘Yep, that’s fine by me. Read them on the beach.’”
Two of her books were adapted into films, with the major Hollywood hit Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009) directed by PJ Hogan and starring Isla Fisher as Becky Bloomwood. Maddy was present on set in New York for much of the filming, helping with the script, and only two months ago gave away some of the film memorabilia at an event to raise money for the Brain Tumour Charity. It is testament to the loyalty of her readers that at least two women flew in from the US to be part of it.
Maddy was born in Roehampton, south-west London, to David Townley, a teacher, and Patricia (nee Kinsella), a lecturer. She was the eldest of three sisters in a close and affectionate family. Her mother would make up long stories at night instead of reading to her daughters, a habit that Maddy later said made her laugh “and taught us that making up stories was natural”. She attended Putney high and Sherborne schools and, a gifted musician, initially studied music at New College, Oxford, but switched after a year to philosophy, politics and economics.
On her first day at university, in true romcom style, she met Henry Wickham, a choral scholar, and they married in 1991. It was a notably happy union; they did everything together, including many of her publicity tours, and as their family grew to five children, he eventually gave up his job as a headteacher to become her manager and run the household, which allowed her freedom to write unimpeded. It was in part this marital act of love that allowed her to be so prolific – she wrote more than 30 novels and was planning a new one even in the summer of 2025.
She was, for all her success, profoundly grounded in family; her children and Henry came first in all things, and a visit to their house in Dorset inevitably meant immersion in a cheer-filled household where young people came and went with friends, and music was played. It was not unusual for the two of them to accompany each other on the piano, singing, and they maintained strong links to Westminster Abbey choir. Maddy and I met in an online writers’ chatroom, where she made friendships with a handful of writers that lasted decades, speaking daily and meeting regularly throughout the year.
It was shortly before the publication of her book The Burnout in 2023 that Maddy was given the devastating diagnosis of glioblastoma. At her request, the news was kept private for a year, to allow the family – especially her children – to adjust to what she called “the new normal”. When she finally went public, it came as something of a relief to her to be open about it – and just as she processed almost everything through her writing, so she detailed her treatment and its impact on family in an extraordinary semi-autobiographical novella about a writer who suffers a brain tumour, What Does It Feel Like?, which was a Sunday Times bestseller and listed in the New York Times 100 most notable books of 2024.
In one particularly poignant passage, the book details how Henry had to tell her every day anew about her diagnosis and prognosis, as her brain surgery meant she repeatedly lost her memory, an act she later described as the ultimate expression of love.
She approached her diagnosis and treatment the same way she approached everything, with grace and humour and a sense of her own good fortune, despite the brutality of surgery and chemotherapy. She was still signing books for delighted readers in October, despite her evident frailty. After deciding not to continue with treatment, she remained at home with her family, visited by her tight band of loyal friends, and right up to the end was able to hear the sounds of the household around her and, an unabashed lover of Christmas, the sound of carols playing.
In What Does It Feel Like?, a particularly poignant passage details a conversation between the protagonist and her husband where he asks if there is anything on her bucket list that she still wants to do, and she replies that what she would really like is not foreign trips or grand gestures, but what she calls “normal plus” – watching television with better snacks, or a particularly good marmalade.
For all her glamour and success, Maddy simply wanted her family nearby, and to write, and to bring joy to those around her, whether loved ones or readers. In the last of these aims she undoubtedly succeeded.
She is survived by Henry, her children, Freddy, Hugo, Oscar, Rex and Sybella, and by her mother and sisters, Gemma and Abigail.
• Sophie Kinsella (Madeleine Sophie Wickham), writer, born 12 December 1969; died 10 December 2025
