Joanna Trollope, the author known for her novels depicting the lives of everyday Britons, has died at 82, the Guardian reports.

Trollope, a distant relative of the 19th-century novelist Anthony Trollope, was born in Gloucestershire, England, and educated at the University of Oxford. She made her literary debut in 1978 with the novel Eliza Stanhope and followed that up the next year with Parson Harding’s Daughter.

She had a breakthrough hit in 1991 with The Rector’s Wife, and went on to write many more novels, including The Men and the Girls, The Choir, The Best of Friends, Marrying the Mistress, Second Honeymoon, and The Soldier's Wife.

Trollope’s first books were historical novels, but she pivoted to writing contemporary fiction about the day-to-day life of middle-class people in Great Britain. Her latter works have been described as “Aga sagas,” a genre named after the AGA brand stoves that were popular in rural England. Trollope disliked that term, calling it “jolly annoying.”

Trollope’s admirers paid tribute to her on social media. On the platform X, author and journalist Emma Woolf wrote, “Yet another sad loss to women’s fiction: Joanna Trollope, not only queen of the Aga Saga, but a truly fabulous writer (and descendant of the all-time great Anthony Trollope)”.

And novelist Christine Stovelle posted, “What a sad week it’s been for literature. I once had a very brief conversation with Joanna Trollope in the ladies at a Romantic Novelists’ Association do and she was lovely; warm, friendly and completely down to earth.” 

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.