Dame Hilary Mantel, author of the best-selling Wolf Hall trilogy, has died, her publisher confirmed on Friday. She was 70.

“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,” Mantel’s publisher said in a statement. 

Also Read | US Senate panel approves bill that helps news companies deal with Google, Facebook

Hilary Mantel won two Booker Prize awards – for 2009’s Wolf Hall and then for its 2012 follow-up Bring Up the Bodies. The trilogy ended with The Mirror and the Light, which was published in 2020. It became a fiction best-seller and was longlisted for The Booker Prize 2020.

Dame Hilary was the first woman to receive the Booker Prize twice.

Also Read | KTLA anchor Mark Mester fired days after Lynette Romero’s departure: Here’s why

Harry Potter author JK Rowling and journalist Caitlin Moran were amongst the many who paid their tributes. 

“We’ve lost a genius,” JK Rowling said. 

“Hilary Mantel’s mind was one of the most powerful and magic machines on Earth. We were lucky she wrote as much as she did, but holy hell, it’s devastating that we’ve collectively lost something so astonishing,” Author and journalist Caitlin Moran tweeted. 

Also read: South Korea’s opposition party demanding President Yoon Suk-Yeol’s apology: Here’s why

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said,”Such terribly sad news. It is impossible to overstate the significance of the literary legacy Hilary Mantel leaves behind. Her brilliant Wolf Hall trilogy was the crowning achievement in an outstanding body of work. Rest in peace.”

“Hilary Mantel wrote historical novels that will be read for centuries to come. Brilliant, moving, fascinating, modern yet transporting. One of the greats. What a contribution to our national life and culture,” broadcaster Stig Abell said. 

Also read: United Nations reforms: How countries reacted

Nicholas Pearson, Mantel’s longtime editor, said her death was “devastating.”

“Only last month I sat with her on a sunny afternoon in Devon, while she talked excitedly about the new novel she had embarked on,” he said. “That we won’t have the pleasure of any more of her words is unbearable. What we do have is a body of work that will be read for generations.”