statement posted<\/a> to her Instagram account on Wednesday read: \u201cWe 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.<\/p>\n\u201cWe can\u2019t imagine what life will be like without her radiance and love of life.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite her illness, which she bore with unimaginable courage, Sophie counted herself truly blessed \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe will be missed so much our hearts are breaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wickham was born in London in 1969. She studied music at New College, Oxford, before switching to Philosophy, Politics and Economics. After graduation, she became a financial journalist, but she said she found the job dull. During the long commute to central London, she would read paperbacks by the likes of Mary Wesley and Joanna Trollope, and began wanting to write a book.<\/p>\n
At 24, she wrote her first novel, The Tennis Party, about a group of friends who take part in a weekend tournament. It was the first of seven novels Wickham wrote under her real name, published yearly between 1995-2001, including Cocktails for Three, The Wedding Girl, Sleeping Arrangements and The Gatecrasher. Sleeping Arrangements was adapted as a musical by Chris Burgess.<\/p>\n
The Madeleine Wickham books are \u201crather different\u201d from her later Sophie Kinsella books, said the author. \u201cThey\u2019re a bit more serious, a bit darker and are all ensemble pieces without a main heroine, but groups of characters whose lives interlink in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wickham submitted her first manuscript written under the name Sophie Kinsella, The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic, without revealing her identity to her publishers. The book \u2013 issued as Confessions of a Shopaholic in some countries \u2013 was published in 2000 and became the first of 10 instalments in the Shopaholic series. The stories follow Becky Bloomwood, a financial journalist with a spending problem. \u201cI thought, wait a minute, shopping has become the national pastime, and nobody has written about it,\u201d said Wickham. \u201cIt felt very much like an experimental project.\u201d<\/p>\n
The series\u2019 first and second novels \u2013 the latter titled Shopaholic Abroad \u2013 were adapted for film. Confessions of a Shopaholic, directed by PJ Hogan and starring Isla Fisher and Hugh Dancy, was released in 2009. \u2013 Guardian\/PA <\/p>\n