Sophie Kinsella, bestselling author of ‘Shopaholic’ books, dies at 55

British author Madeleine Wickham, who achieved international fame writing the ‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’ series under the pen name Sophie Kinsella, died Wednesday.

She was 55.

Her family announced her death in an Instagram post.

“We are heartbroken to announce the passing this morning of our beloved Sophie (aka Maddy, aka Mummy). She died peacefully, with her final days filled with her true loves: family and music and warmth and Christmas and joy,“ they wrote.

“We can’t imagine what life will be like without her radiance and love of life. 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. She will be missed so much our hearts are breaking.”

In 2022, Wickham was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, a rare form of brain cancer. She made the news public in a post to X in 2024.

“To my dear readers and followers. I’ve wanted for a long time to share with you a health update and I’ve been waiting for the strength to do so,” she wrote.

Wickham sprang to fame in the early 2000s, with the publication of “The Secret Dreamworld of A Shopaholic,” which was released as “Confession of a Shopaholic,” in the United States.

The book and subsequent series chronicled the adventures of heroine Rebecca Bloomwood, a financial journalist who has an uncontrollable and comedic urge for retail therapy, The New York Times reported.

The idea for the book came in 1999 when Wickham got an eye-opening credit card bill.

“My first thought was, ‘I don’t remember buying this or that, therefore I must have been defrauded,’” Wickham told The Times Colonist, a news outlet in British Columbia, in 2007. “I suddenly saw the potential of shopping as a story to write about.”

She adopted the pen name Sophie Kinsella, which was a combination of her middle name and her mother’s maiden name, for what she had believed would be a one-time side project, The New York Times reported.

It was anything but. She wrote nine “Shopaholic” novels, which sold millions of copies worldwide, and were translated into dozens of languages, the newspaper reported.

The first two novels in the series were brought to the big screen as “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, according to The Times.

“My first aim is to make people laugh,” she told The Boston Herald in 2004. “People always come up to me with a huge beam on their face. They feel like they know me and that they’re my best friend, and I feel like I know them, too. It’s like we share a common friend: my characters.”