Dame Hilary Mantel, the author of the best-selling Wolf Hall trilogy, has died aged 70, her publisher has confirmed.
Her longtime agent Bill Hamilton said she died days after suffering a stroke on Monday, September 19, but that has not been confirmed.
According to the BBC, which first reported her passing, she won the Booker Prize twice, for 2009’s Wolf Hall, the first in the Thomas Cromwell series, and its 2012 sequel Bring Up the Bodies.
In a statement, her publisher (4thEstate Books, now owned by HarperCollins) said: “We are heartbroken at the death of our beloved author, Dame Hilary Mantel.
“Our thoughts are with her friends and family, especially her husband, Gerald.
“This is a devastating loss and we can only be grateful she left us with such a magnificent body of work.”
HarperCollins said Dame Hilary had died “suddenly yet peacefully” on Thursday, surrounded by family and friends, after suffering a stroke.
The third and final book in the series, The Mirror and the Light, was published in 2020 to much critical acclaim, became a fiction best-seller and was longlisted for The Booker Prize 2020.
The trilogy sold more than five million copies globally and has been translated into 41 languages.
