Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a prolific children’s book author, memoirist and public speaker who, dying of cancer, found an extraordinarily large readership this month with a column in The New York Times titled “You May Want to Marry My Husband,” died on Monday at her home in Chicago. She was 51.

The cause was ovarian cancer, which she learned she had in September 2015, her agent, Amy Rennert, said.

Ms. Rosenthal’s bittersweet paean to her spouse of 26 years appeared as a Modern Love column in the online Style section of The Times on March 3 and in the Sunday newspaper section on March 5.

The column has drawn almost four and a half million readers online.

“I want more time with Jason,” she wrote. “I want more time with my children. I want more time sipping martinis at the Green Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights. But that is not going to happen. I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet. So why I am doing this?