Shields had spoken openly of her illness

Shields died on Wednesday night at her home in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

She died of complications from breast cancer first diagnosed almost five years ago, said a statement from her publisher in Canada, Random House.

Shields, one of Canada's best-known contemporary authors, was noted for her books about the lives of ordinary people, especially women.

Her contribution to writing - both writing by women and about women - is immense Kate Mosse, Orange Prize

She won international recognition for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, about a woman who drifts through life bewildered by her inability to understand her place in the world.

The book won a Pulitzer prize and Canada's Governor General's Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Shields was also featured on the longlist for this year's Orange Prize for women's fiction for her novel Unless, which made the shortlist for the 2002 Booker Prize.

She won the award in 1998 for Larry's Party.

Shields won international acclaim for her book The Stone Diaries

Kate Mosse, honorary director of the Orange Prize, told BBC News Online she was deeply saddened.

"Her contribution to writing - both writing by women and about women - is immense," she said.

"She was also one of the most generous and inspiring winners of the Orange Prize. She supported new writers as well as always achieving the very highest standards in her own work. She will be greatly missed by readers everywhere."

Martyn Goff, administrator of the Booker Prize, said: "She was a very very talented person whose life has been cut short.

"She will encourage other people because of the way she succeeded and the way she kept at it."

Shock

Joel Conarroe, chairman of the 1995 Pulitzer fiction jury when Shields won, said while her death was not a surprise it was still a shock.

"She was a wonderful writer and a terrific person. She will be remembered as an important writer in the same way as someone like E Annie Proulx, a woman of a certain age who began writing brilliant novels in their 50s and 60s."

An American born in Oak Park, Illinois, Shields was a naturalised Canadian with dual citizenship, referring to herself as having "a foot on either side of the border".

The idea of women being fully human has always been a preoccupation Carol Shields

Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1998, she had spoken openly about her illness and continued to write.

"I've been witness to this huge change for women in the second half of the 20th Century," Shields once said.

"They say you write the same novel over and over and the idea of women being fully human has always been a preoccupation."

Fellow writers paid tribute to her at an event in Toronto in April last year which Shields was too ill to attend.

Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood and others read from her work and praised her as a person.

She later said: "It was very moving. It's unusual to hear writers say such wonderful things about each other."