I began writing this piece, last week, about the very sad and totally unexpected death of Sophie Kinsella, only to be shocked again to learn of the sudden demise of Joanna Trollope, one day later!
Sophie Kinsella died on 10 December, aged 55, just two days before her 56th birthday. In 2022 she was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, for which she underwent neurosurgery.
Her first novel was published in 1995 under her married name Madeleine Wickham. Following her decision to forgo the thrills of financial journalism, she turned to fiction writing. Her death is a huge loss to the literary world and to all her millions of readers who followed her main protagonist Becky Bloomwood – a financial journalist with a serious shopping addiction. Beginning with Confessions of a Shopaholic’ in 2000, through to Christmas Shopaholic in 2019, her books (34 novels in 30 years) have sold over 50 million copies with themes such as love, self discovery, relationships and, of course, shopping.
Joanna Trollope sadly passed away on the 11 December two days after her birthday, she was 82.
Starting out as civil servant and then a teacher, Joanna turned to full-time writing in 1980. Despite her family connections to Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, she believed it hadn’t helped her at all in her professional life. She also wrote under the pen name, Caroline Harvey.
Joanna began writing historical fiction before converting to contemporary novels. Because of their more traditional, provincial themes they were labelled by one novelist as ‘aga sagas’ – a term she disliked since her stories were anything but cosy. She produced a huge body of work from her historical novel Eliza Stanhope in 1981,through to Mum & Dad in 2020. As one reviewer summed it up ‘Nobody writes about family tensions better than Joanna Trollope’.
We have lost two outstanding writers in the space of two days. A tragic loss to the literary world and to their families, especially at this time.
deilibri 