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Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the 88 years of age, achieved sales of eleven million books of her assorted epic books over her half-century literary career. Cherished by all discerning readers over a specific age (forty-five), she was presented to a new generation last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Devoted fans would have liked to view the Rutshire chronicles in order: commencing with Riders, originally published in 1985, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, heartbreaker, rider, is initially presented. But that’s a sidebar – what was striking about viewing Rivals as a complete series was how well Cooper’s fictional realm had aged. The chronicles distilled the 1980s: the shoulder pads and bubble skirts; the obsession with class; nobility disdaining the ostentatious newly wealthy, both ignoring everyone else while they quibbled about how room-temperature their sparkling wine was; the gender dynamics, with harassment and assault so commonplace they were virtually personas in their own right, a pair you could trust to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have inhabited this era totally, she was never the classic fish not seeing the ocean because it’s ubiquitous. She had a humanity and an keen insight that you might not expect from listening to her speak. Every character, from the pet to the horse to her family to her French exchange’s brother, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “completely exquisite”. People got groped and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s remarkable how tolerated it is in many more highbrow books of the period.

Background and Behavior

She was affluent middle-class, which for practical purposes meant that her parent had to earn an income, but she’d have defined the classes more by their values. The middle classes fretted about all things, all the time – what society might think, primarily – and the aristocracy didn’t bother with “nonsense”. She was risqué, at times extremely, but her prose was never vulgar.

She’d recount her childhood in storybook prose: “Daddy went to battle and Mother was deeply concerned”. They were both absolutely stunning, engaged in a enduring romance, and this Cooper replicated in her own marriage, to a editor of historical accounts, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was 27, the marriage wasn’t perfect (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was always comfortable giving people the formula for a successful union, which is noisy mattress but (big reveal), they’re creaking with all the joy. He never read her books – he read Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel unwell. She wasn't bothered, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be caught reading military history.

Constantly keep a notebook – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what being 24 felt like

Initial Novels

Prudence (the late 70s) was the fifth book in the Romance collection, which began with Emily in 1975. If you came to Cooper from the later works, having commenced in the main series, the Romances, AKA “those ones named after affluent ladies” – also Imogen and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every male lead feeling like a test-run for Campbell-Black, every main character a little bit drippy. Plus, chapter for chapter (Without exact data), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit uptight on issues of modesty, women always fretting that men would think they’re immoral, men saying batshit things about why they preferred virgins (similarly, ostensibly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the first to unseal a jar of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d suggest reading these novels at a formative age. I believed for a while that that’s what affluent individuals really thought.

They were, however, remarkably tightly written, successful romances, which is considerably tougher than it seems. You lived Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s difficult family-by-marriage, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an hopeless moment to a lottery win of the emotions, and you could not once, even in the early days, pinpoint how she achieved it. One minute you’d be laughing at her incredibly close descriptions of the sheets, the following moment you’d have tears in your eyes and uncertainty how they appeared.

Authorial Advice

Asked how to be a author, Cooper frequently advised the kind of thing that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been bothered to assist a novice: utilize all five of your perceptions, say how things aromatic and appeared and sounded and felt and flavored – it really lifts the narrative. But probably more useful was: “Forever keep a diary – it’s very challenging, when you’re mid-twenties, to remember what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you detect, in the longer, densely peopled books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just one lead, all with very upper-class names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an years apart of several years, between two sisters, between a male and a lady, you can perceive in the conversation.

A Literary Mystery

The historical account of Riders was so pitch-perfectly typical of the author it couldn't possibly have been true, except it definitely is true because a London paper published a notice about it at the time: she wrote the entire draft in 1970, well before the first books, carried it into the city center and forgot it on a public transport. Some context has been deliberately left out of this tale – what, for instance, was so significant in the West End that you would leave the unique draft of your book on a train, which is not that different from leaving your child on a railway? Undoubtedly an rendezvous, but what sort?

Cooper was wont to exaggerate her own chaos and clumsiness