Most readers recognize the Confessions of a Shopaholic series as novels written by the author, Sophie Kinsella. In reality, however, these books are in fact written by Madeleine Wickham. Born in London, Wickham began her career as a financial journalist just like Becky Bloomwood in the Shopaholic series. At the age of 24, she wrote her first novel titled The Tennis Party, which was the start of her career as a novelist.
Writing under her new penname, Sophie Kinsella, Wickham submitted to her current publishers, who immediately worked on getting Kinsella's works out into the public. The whole time, her editors never knew that Kinsella was actually already one of the publishers' authors. When her book, Can You Keep a Secret? came out, Wickham finally revealed her own secret.
This author has several novels written as Madeleine Wickham and several more as Sophie Kinsella, but all of them have been great successes written by one single woman. The Shopaholic series even led Wickham to the UK's bestseller list in 2000, and the first two novels were made into a movie.
Madeleine Wickham's penname story just goes to show that some secrets are indeed hard to keep!
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