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The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 88, sold 11 million volumes of her various sweeping books over her 50-year writing career. Adored by anyone with any sense over a certain age (45), she was brought to a new generation last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Devoted fans would have preferred to see the Rutshire chronicles in order: beginning with Riders, first published in the mid-80s, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, philanderer, equestrian, is debuts. But that’s a side note – what was remarkable about seeing Rivals as a complete series was how well Cooper’s world had remained relevant. The chronicles encapsulated the eighties: the broad shoulders and voluminous skirts; the fixation on status; the upper class looking down on the ostentatious newly wealthy, both overlooking everyone else while they quibbled about how warm their sparkling wine was; the intimate power struggles, with unwanted advances and assault so commonplace they were practically figures in their own right, a duo you could trust to advance the story.

While Cooper might have occupied this period totally, she was never the classic fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s all around. She had a empathy and an perceptive wisdom that you maybe wouldn’t guess from listening to her speak. All her creations, from the dog to the horse to her family to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got harassed and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s surprising how OK it is in many more highbrow books of the period.

Class and Character

She was upper-middle-class, which for practical purposes meant that her parent had to earn an income, but she’d have characterized the strata more by their values. The middle-class people anxiously contemplated about everything, all the time – what others might think, mainly – and the elite didn’t bother with “nonsense”. She was spicy, at times very much, but her prose was never coarse.

She’d describe her upbringing in idyllic language: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mother was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both completely gorgeous, engaged in a enduring romance, and this Cooper emulated in her own union, to a publisher of historical accounts, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was twenty-seven, the relationship wasn’t perfect (he was a philanderer), but she was never less than confident giving people the recipe for a successful union, which is squeaky bed but (crucial point), they’re creaking with all the laughter. He never read her books – he read Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel more ill. She didn’t mind, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be spotted reading battle accounts.

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

Early Works

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance collection, which began with Emily in 1975. If you discovered Cooper in reverse, having started in the main series, the Romances, alternatively called “the novels named after posh girls” – also Imogen and Harriet – were almost there, every hero feeling like a test-run for the iconic character, every female lead a little bit weak. Plus, page for page (I haven’t actually run the numbers), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit reserved on topics of propriety, women always being anxious that men would think they’re loose, men saying batshit things about why they preferred virgins (comparably, apparently, as a genuine guy always wants to be the initial to unseal a tin of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these stories at a impressionable age. I assumed for a while that that is what posh people really thought.

They were, however, incredibly well-crafted, high-functioning romances, which is far more difficult than it seems. You felt Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s annoying relatives, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could guide you from an all-is-lost moment to a jackpot of the heart, and you could not once, even in the initial stages, identify how she achieved it. One minute you’d be chuckling at her incredibly close depictions of the bedding, the following moment you’d have tears in your eyes and no idea how they arrived.

Literary Guidance

Inquired how to be a writer, Cooper would often state the sort of advice that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been arsed to help out a novice: employ all all of your perceptions, say how things smelled and looked and heard and touched and palatable – it greatly improves the narrative. But likely more helpful was: “Forever keep a notebook – it’s very hard, when you’re mid-twenties, to recall what twenty-four felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you detect, in the longer, character-rich books, which have numerous female leads rather than just one, all with very upper-class names, unless they’re Stateside, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an generational gap of a few years, between two sisters, between a gentleman and a woman, you can perceive in the speech.

An Author's Tale

The historical account of Riders was so pitch-perfectly characteristically Cooper it can’t possibly have been real, except it certainly was factual because a major newspaper ran an appeal about it at the period: she finished the entire draft in the early 70s, prior to the first books, took it into the downtown and left it on a public transport. Some context has been purposely excluded of this tale – what, for example, was so significant in the city that you would leave the only copy of your book on a public transport, which is not that far from forgetting your baby on a railway? Undoubtedly an meeting, but what sort?

Cooper was inclined to embellish her own disorder and clumsiness