🔗 Share this article

The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 88, racked up sales of 11m copies of her various epic books over her 50-year writing career. Adored by all discerning readers over a certain age (mid-forties), she was presented to a modern audience last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Cooper purists would have liked to view the Rutshire chronicles in sequence: starting with Riders, originally published in the mid-80s, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, heartbreaker, equestrian, is initially presented. But that’s a side note – what was remarkable about viewing Rivals as a box set was how brilliantly Cooper’s universe had aged. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the shoulder pads and puffball skirts; the obsession with class; nobility disdaining the Technicolored nouveau riche, both dismissing everyone else while they complained about how lukewarm their sparkling wine was; the sexual politics, with unwanted advances and misconduct so commonplace they were virtually figures in their own right, a duo you could count on to drive the narrative forward.

While Cooper might have lived in this age fully, she was never the typical fish not noticing the ocean because it’s all around. She had a empathy and an perceptive wisdom that you might not expect from hearing her talk. All her creations, from the pet to the equine to her mother and father to her international student's relative, was always “utterly charming” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got groped and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s astonishing how OK it is in many more highbrow books of the time.

Background and Behavior

She was affluent middle-class, which for all intents and purposes meant that her father had to earn an income, but she’d have characterized the strata more by their values. The bourgeoisie anxiously contemplated about everything, all the time – what other people might think, mostly – and the aristocracy didn’t give a … well “stuff”. She was risqué, at times very much, but her language was never coarse.

She’d narrate her family life in storybook prose: “Dad went to battle and Mummy was deeply concerned”. They were both utterly beautiful, participating in a enduring romance, and this Cooper mirrored in her own marriage, to a businessman of historical accounts, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was twenty-seven, the marriage wasn’t perfect (he was a philanderer), but she was never less than comfortable giving people the recipe for a happy marriage, which is creaking bed springs but (crucial point), they’re squeaking with all the joy. He didn't read her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had flu, and said it made him feel unwell. She wasn't bothered, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be spotted reading battle accounts.

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

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance series, which started with Emily in the mid-70s. If you came to Cooper in reverse, having started in Rutshire, the Romances, alternatively called “the novels named after upper-class women” – also Bella and Harriet – were near misses, every protagonist feeling like a test-run for the iconic character, every main character a little bit insipid. Plus, chapter for chapter (I haven’t actually run the numbers), there was less sex in them. They were a bit reserved on issues of modesty, women always being anxious that men would think they’re promiscuous, men saying ridiculous comments about why they preferred virgins (similarly, seemingly, as a genuine guy always wants to be the first to open a tin of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d suggest reading these novels at a young age. I assumed for a while that that is what the upper class actually believed.

They were, however, extremely well-crafted, effective romances, which is considerably tougher than it sounds. You lived Harriet’s surprise baby, Bella’s annoying in-laws, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could guide you from an all-is-lost moment to a jackpot of the soul, and you could not ever, even in the early days, identify how she achieved it. At one moment you’d be chuckling at her highly specific descriptions of the bed linen, the subsequently you’d have emotional response and no idea how they got there.

Writing Wisdom

Inquired how to be a writer, Cooper would often state the kind of thing that the famous author would have said, if he could have been bothered to help out a novice: use all all of your perceptions, say how things smelled and looked and heard and touched and palatable – it greatly improves the prose. But perhaps more practical was: “Forever keep a notebook – it’s very hard, when you’re twenty-five, to recall what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you observe, in the more detailed, character-rich books, which have numerous female leads rather than just one lead, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re Stateside, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an years apart of several years, between two siblings, between a gentleman and a woman, you can detect in the dialogue.

An Author's Tale

The backstory of Riders was so exactly Jilly Cooper it might not have been true, except it definitely is factual because a major newspaper published a notice about it at the period: she wrote the entire draft in 1970, prior to the Romances, brought it into the city center and forgot it on a bus. Some texture has been deliberately left out of this story – what, for example, was so crucial in the city that you would abandon the sole version of your book on a bus, which is not that different from abandoning your infant on a railway? Certainly an meeting, but what sort?

Cooper was inclined to embellish her own messiness and ineptitude