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The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the 88 years old, sold eleven million copies of her various epic books over her five-decade career in writing. Adored by all discerning readers over a certain age (45), she was brought to a new generation last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Devoted fans would have liked to see the Rutshire chronicles in sequence: commencing with Riders, first published in 1985, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, philanderer, equestrian, is initially presented. But that’s a minor point – what was remarkable about watching Rivals as a binge-watch was how well Cooper’s universe had aged. The chronicles encapsulated the 1980s: the shoulder pads and voluminous skirts; the preoccupation with social class; aristocrats sneering at the ostentatious newly wealthy, both ignoring everyone else while they snipped about how lukewarm their champagne was; the intimate power struggles, with harassment and abuse so commonplace they were virtually personas in their own right, a double act you could trust to drive the narrative forward.

While Cooper might have inhabited this era totally, she was never the classic fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a humanity and an perceptive wisdom that you maybe wouldn’t guess from listening to her speak. Everyone, from the pet to the horse to her parents to her international student's relative, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got harassed and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s surprising how acceptable it is in many more highbrow books of the era.

Background and Behavior

She was well-to-do, which for all intents and purposes meant that her father had to work for a living, but she’d have defined the strata more by their mores. The middle classes worried about every little detail, all the time – what society might think, primarily – and the elite didn’t give a … well “nonsense”. She was risqué, at times extremely, but her dialogue was never vulgar.

She’d describe her upbringing in fairytale terms: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mummy was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both utterly beautiful, involved in a enduring romance, and this Cooper replicated in her own marriage, to a publisher of war books, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was 27, the relationship wasn’t without hiccups (he was a philanderer), but she was always at ease giving people the secret for a happy marriage, which is noisy mattress but (big reveal), they’re squeaking with all the joy. He avoided reading 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 reciprocated: she wouldn’t be caught reading military history.

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

The Romance Series

Prudence (the late 70s) was the fifth installment in the Romance series, which commenced with Emily in the mid-70s. If you approached Cooper from the later works, having commenced in Rutshire, the early novels, also known as “the books named after upper-class women” – also Imogen and Harriet – were near misses, every hero feeling like a prototype for Rupert, every female lead a little bit drippy. Plus, line for line (I haven’t actually run the numbers), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit reserved on matters of modesty, women always being anxious that men would think they’re immoral, men saying ridiculous comments about why they favored virgins (in much the same way, seemingly, as a genuine guy always wants to be the primary to open a jar of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these books at a formative age. I believed for a while that that was what posh people really thought.

They were, however, remarkably well-crafted, high-functioning romances, which is considerably tougher than it appears. You felt Harriet’s surprise baby, Bella’s difficult in-laws, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could transport you from an desperate moment to a jackpot of the emotions, and you could never, even in the beginning, identify how she did it. At one moment you’d be smiling at her incredibly close depictions of the bedding, the next you’d have watery eyes and no idea how they arrived.

Literary Guidance

Inquired how to be a writer, Cooper would often state the kind of thing that Ernest Hemingway would have said, if he could have been bothered to guide a novice: employ all 5 of your senses, say how things smelled and appeared and audible and felt and tasted – it greatly improves the writing. But probably more useful was: “Constantly keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to remember what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you notice, in the more extensive, character-rich books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just one, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re American, in which case they’re called a simple moniker. Even an age difference of several years, between two siblings, between a male and a woman, you can detect in the conversation.

An Author's Tale

The origin story of Riders was so perfectly Jilly Cooper it couldn't possibly have been accurate, except it certainly was factual because a major newspaper ran an appeal about it at the time: she completed the entire draft in the early 70s, well before the first books, carried it into the downtown and forgot it on a public transport. Some texture has been deliberately left out of this story – what, for example, was so crucial in the West End that you would abandon the only copy of your novel on a bus, which is not that different from leaving your baby on a transport? Undoubtedly an meeting, but which type?

Cooper was wont to amp up her own disorder and ineptitude