🔗 Share this article

Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the age of 88, sold 11 million books of her various sweeping books over her 50-year career in writing. Adored by every sensible person over a particular age (mid-forties), she was presented to a younger audience last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Devoted fans would have liked to watch the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: beginning with Riders, originally published in the mid-80s, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, heartbreaker, horse rider, is initially presented. But that’s a side note – what was notable about watching Rivals as a binge-watch was how brilliantly Cooper’s world had remained relevant. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the power dressing and puffball skirts; the preoccupation with social class; aristocrats looking down on the Technicolored nouveau riche, both ignoring everyone else while they quibbled about how warm their champagne was; the intimate power struggles, with harassment and misconduct so routine they were practically figures in their own right, a pair you could trust to advance the story.

While Cooper might have inhabited this age completely, she was never the typical fish not noticing the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a compassion and an keen insight that you might not expect from hearing her talk. Everyone, from the canine to the pony to her mother and father to her French exchange’s brother, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got assaulted and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s astonishing how acceptable it is in many more highbrow books of the period.

Background and Behavior

She was upper-middle-class, which for all intents and purposes meant that her dad had to work for a living, but she’d have described the strata more by their mores. The middle classes worried about every little detail, all the time – what others might think, primarily – and the elite didn’t care a … well “stuff”. She was spicy, at times incredibly so, but her dialogue was never vulgar.

She’d recount her upbringing in fairytale terms: “Daddy went to Dunkirk and Mummy was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both absolutely stunning, participating in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper mirrored in her own union, to a publisher of war books, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was 27, the relationship wasn’t perfect (he was a unfaithful type), but she was consistently comfortable giving people the secret for a happy marriage, which is creaking bed springs but (crucial point), they’re squeaking with all the mirth. He didn't read her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel more ill. She took no offense, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be caught reading military history.

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

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance collection, which started with Emily in 1975. If you came to Cooper backwards, having started in Rutshire, the early novels, also known as “the novels named after posh girls” – also Imogen and Harriet – were almost there, every male lead feeling like a test-run for Rupert, every heroine a little bit drippy. Plus, chapter for chapter (I can't verify statistically), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit conservative on matters of modesty, women always worrying that men would think they’re immoral, men saying batshit things about why they favored virgins (similarly, seemingly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the initial to unseal a tin of coffee). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these books at a young age. I thought for a while that that was what the upper class genuinely felt.

They were, however, extremely well-crafted, effective romances, which is far more difficult than it seems. You experienced Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s annoying relatives, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an hopeless moment to a jackpot of the emotions, and you could not once, even in the initial stages, pinpoint how she achieved it. One minute you’d be smiling at her highly specific accounts of the bed linen, the following moment you’d have tears in your eyes and little understanding how they appeared.

Authorial Advice

Asked how to be a novelist, Cooper would often state the type of guidance that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been arsed to assist a aspiring writer: utilize all 5 of your perceptions, say how things aromatic and looked and heard and tactile and tasted – it significantly enhances the writing. But perhaps more practical was: “Forever keep a diary – it’s very hard, when you’re mid-twenties, to recall what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the first things you notice, in the longer, densely peopled books, which have numerous female leads 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 simple moniker. Even an age difference of several years, between two relatives, between a man and a lady, you can hear in the speech.

The Lost Manuscript

The backstory of Riders was so pitch-perfectly characteristically Cooper it might not have been real, except it absolutely is factual because a London paper published a notice about it at the era: she finished the complete book in 1970, long before the early novels, took it into the West End and misplaced it on a vehicle. Some detail has been deliberately left out of this anecdote – what, for instance, was so crucial in the city that you would abandon the only copy of your manuscript on a public transport, which is not that unlike leaving your infant on a train? Surely an rendezvous, but which type?

Cooper was wont to exaggerate her own chaos and ineptitude