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The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the 88 years old, sold 11m copies of her many grand books over her half-century writing career. Cherished by anyone with any sense over a specific age (forty-five), she was introduced to a new generation last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Devoted fans would have liked to view the Rutshire chronicles in order: starting with Riders, first published in the mid-80s, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, heartbreaker, equestrian, is first introduced. But that’s a minor point – what was remarkable about seeing Rivals as a binge-watch was how brilliantly Cooper’s universe had aged. The chronicles encapsulated the 80s: the power dressing and voluminous skirts; the obsession with class; the upper class sneering at the ostentatious newly wealthy, both overlooking everyone else while they snipped about how room-temperature their sparkling wine was; the gender dynamics, with inappropriate behavior and misconduct so commonplace they were practically personas in their own right, a duo you could count on to drive the narrative forward.

While Cooper might have lived in this age completely, she was never the typical fish not seeing the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a compassion and an perceptive wisdom that you could easily miss from hearing her talk. Every character, from the canine to the pony to her parents to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got harassed and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s astonishing how tolerated it is in many more highbrow books of the era.

Social Strata and Personality

She was well-to-do, which for all intents and purposes meant that her parent had to work for a living, but she’d have described the classes more by their mores. The middle-class people anxiously contemplated about every little detail, all the time – what other people might think, mainly – and the elite didn’t care a … well “such things”. She was spicy, at times extremely, but her dialogue was always refined.

She’d describe her family life in idyllic language: “Father went to Dunkirk and Mummy was deeply concerned”. They were both absolutely stunning, involved in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper emulated in her own partnership, to a editor of war books, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was 27, the union wasn’t without hiccups (he was a unfaithful type), but she was always comfortable giving people the recipe for a successful union, which is noisy mattress but (key insight), they’re squeaking with all the joy. He didn't read her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel more ill. She wasn't bothered, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be caught reading battle accounts.

Forever keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re mid-twenties, to remember what twenty-four felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (the late 70s) was the fifth volume in the Romance novels, which began with Emily in 1975. If you discovered Cooper backwards, having begun in the main series, the early novels, alternatively called “those ones named after affluent ladies” – also Octavia and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every hero feeling like a test-run for Campbell-Black, every main character a little bit weak. Plus, page for page (I can't verify statistically), there was less sex in them. They were a bit uptight on issues of decorum, women always fretting that men would think they’re loose, men saying batshit things about why they preferred virgins (comparably, ostensibly, as a real man always wants to be the primary to break a container of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d suggest reading these novels at a young age. I believed for a while that that’s what the upper class really thought.

They were, however, remarkably precisely constructed, successful romances, which is far more difficult than it sounds. You felt Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s pissy in-laws, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could transport you from an all-is-lost moment to a windfall of the soul, and you could not ever, even in the beginning, put your finger on how she achieved it. Suddenly you’d be chuckling at her meticulously detailed descriptions of the sheets, the next you’d have watery eyes and uncertainty how they arrived.

Authorial Advice

Asked how to be a writer, Cooper would often state the sort of advice that the famous author would have said, if he could have been arsed to guide a novice: utilize all 5 of your perceptions, say how things smelled and looked and audible and felt and flavored – it really lifts the prose. But probably more useful was: “Always keep a diary – it’s very challenging, when you’re mid-twenties, to recollect what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the first things you observe, in the more extensive, densely peopled books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just a single protagonist, all with very upper-class names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an years apart of several years, between two sisters, between a gentleman and a lady, you can hear in the dialogue.

An Author's Tale

The historical account of Riders was so pitch-perfectly typical of the author it can’t possibly have been accurate, except it certainly was real because London’s Evening Standard made a public request about it at the period: she completed the entire draft in 1970, well before the Romances, brought it into the downtown and misplaced it on a public transport. Some texture has been deliberately left out of this story – what, for example, was so crucial in the urban area that you would leave the unique draft of your book on a bus, which is not that far from abandoning your baby on a transport? Surely an meeting, but which type?

Cooper was prone to embellish her own messiness and clumsiness