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The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the 88 years old, racked up sales of eleven million books of her assorted grand books over her 50-year career in writing. Beloved by all discerning readers over a particular age (forty-five), she was presented to a modern audience last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Devoted fans would have preferred to watch the Rutshire chronicles in order: starting with Riders, first published in 1985, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, philanderer, equestrian, is first introduced. But that’s a side note – what was striking about viewing Rivals as a box set was how effectively Cooper’s universe had stood the test of time. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the broad shoulders and voluminous skirts; the obsession with class; aristocrats sneering at the Technicolored nouveau riche, both ignoring everyone else while they quibbled about how lukewarm their sparkling wine was; the sexual politics, with unwanted advances and abuse so everyday they were practically personas in their own right, a pair you could trust to advance the story.

While Cooper might have occupied this age fully, she was never the classic fish not noticing the ocean because it’s ubiquitous. She had a humanity and an observational intelligence that you maybe wouldn’t guess from her public persona. Every character, from the dog to the horse to her parents to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got assaulted and further in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s remarkable how acceptable it is in many far more literary books of the era.

Class and Character

She was upper-middle-class, which for practical purposes meant that her parent had to work for a living, but she’d have described the strata more by their customs. The bourgeoisie worried about everything, all the time – what others might think, mainly – and the aristocracy didn’t care a … well “nonsense”. She was spicy, at times extremely, but her language was never vulgar.

She’d narrate her childhood in idyllic language: “Father went to Dunkirk and Mother was deeply concerned”. They were both completely gorgeous, engaged in a enduring romance, and this Cooper replicated in her own partnership, to a businessman of historical accounts, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was in his late twenties, the marriage wasn’t smooth sailing (he was a unfaithful type), but she was consistently at ease giving people the secret for a happy marriage, which is creaking bed springs but (crucial point), they’re noisy with all the joy. He avoided reading her books – he read Prudence once, when he had flu, and said it made him feel worse. She wasn't bothered, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be caught reading war chronicles.

Constantly keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to remember what age 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (the late 70s) was the fifth book in the Romance novels, which began with Emily in 1975. If you came to Cooper backwards, having commenced in her later universe, the Romances, alternatively called “the novels named after affluent ladies” – also Imogen and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every hero feeling like a test-run for Campbell-Black, every female lead a little bit insipid. Plus, page for page (I haven’t actually run the numbers), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit reserved on issues of decorum, women always being anxious that men would think they’re loose, men saying batshit things about why they favored virgins (similarly, apparently, as a genuine guy always wants to be the primary to unseal a container of Nescafé). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these books at a young age. I believed for a while that that is what posh people actually believed.

They were, however, remarkably tightly written, successful romances, which is considerably tougher than it sounds. You experienced Harriet’s surprise baby, Bella’s pissy in-laws, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could take you from an desperate moment to a lottery win of the emotions, and you could not ever, even in the early days, identify how she managed it. One minute you’d be chuckling at her meticulously detailed accounts of the bed linen, the following moment you’d have tears in your eyes and little understanding how they appeared.

Literary Guidance

Questioned how to be a writer, Cooper frequently advised the sort of advice that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been bothered to guide a beginner: utilize all 5 of your faculties, say how things aromatic and appeared and sounded and tactile and palatable – it greatly improves the writing. But likely more helpful was: “Always keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re mid-twenties, to remember what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you notice, in the more extensive, densely peopled books, which have numerous female leads rather than just a single protagonist, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an years apart of four years, between two siblings, between a gentleman and a lady, you can perceive in the conversation.

An Author's Tale

The historical account of Riders was so pitch-perfectly characteristically Cooper it might not have been real, except it definitely is real because a major newspaper published a notice about it at the period: she wrote the entire draft in the early 70s, long before the Romances, carried it into the West End and left it on a public transport. Some detail has been intentionally omitted of this anecdote – what, for example, was so significant in the West End that you would abandon the sole version of your book on a train, which is not that unlike abandoning your child on a transport? Certainly an rendezvous, but what sort?

Cooper was wont to exaggerate her own disorder and clumsiness