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Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the 88 years old, achieved sales of 11 million copies of her various grand books over her 50-year literary 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.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Cooper purists would have wanted to see the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: beginning with Riders, initially released in 1985, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, charmer, rider, is initially presented. But that’s a sidebar – what was striking about seeing Rivals as a binge-watch was how effectively Cooper’s fictional realm had remained relevant. The chronicles encapsulated the 1980s: the broad shoulders and voluminous skirts; the fixation on status; aristocrats disdaining the ostentatious newly wealthy, both ignoring everyone else while they quibbled about how lukewarm their sparkling wine was; the intimate power struggles, with inappropriate behavior and abuse so everyday they were almost characters in their own right, a double act you could rely on to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have lived in this period totally, she was never the classic fish not seeing the ocean because it’s ubiquitous. She had a empathy and an keen insight that you might not expect from listening to her speak. Every character, from the canine to the equine to her parents to her international student's relative, was always “utterly charming” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got harassed and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s surprising how tolerated it is in many far more literary books of the era.

Class and Character

She was well-to-do, which for practical purposes meant that her father had to work for a living, but she’d have described the strata more by their values. The middle-class people worried about all things, all the time – what society might think, mainly – and the upper classes didn’t give a … well “nonsense”. She was spicy, at times extremely, but her dialogue was never vulgar.

She’d narrate her family life in idyllic language: “Daddy went to battle and Mother was deeply concerned”. They were both completely gorgeous, participating in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper replicated 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 philanderer), but she was always comfortable giving people the secret for a blissful partnership, which is squeaky bed but (key insight), they’re squeaking with all the joy. He never read her books – he read Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel worse. She didn’t mind, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading war chronicles.

Always keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re 25, to remember what age 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance collection, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you discovered Cooper in reverse, having started in her later universe, the early novels, AKA “those ones named after upper-class women” – also Bella and Harriet – were near misses, every male lead feeling like a trial version for Rupert, every female lead a little bit weak. Plus, chapter for chapter (Without exact data), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit reserved on topics of modesty, women always being anxious that men would think they’re immoral, men saying outrageous statements about why they preferred virgins (similarly, seemingly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the primary to open a tin of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these stories at a young age. I assumed for a while that that’s what the upper class actually believed.

They were, however, extremely well-crafted, high-functioning romances, which is far more difficult than it sounds. You lived Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s annoying relatives, Emily’s Scottish isolation – Cooper could guide you from an desperate moment to a windfall of the emotions, and you could not once, even in the early days, identify how she managed it. At one moment you’d be smiling at her incredibly close descriptions of the bedding, the subsequently you’d have tears in your eyes and no idea how they got there.

Writing Wisdom

Asked how to be a novelist, Cooper would often state the kind of thing that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been bothered to assist a beginner: employ all 5 of your perceptions, say how things smelled and seemed and sounded and tactile and palatable – it really lifts the narrative. But likely more helpful was: “Always keep a notebook – it’s very challenging, when you’re mid-twenties, to recall what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the first things you observe, in the more detailed, more populated books, which have 17 heroines rather than just one lead, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re Stateside, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an generational gap of a few years, between two siblings, between a man and a woman, you can hear in the dialogue.

A Literary Mystery

The origin story of Riders was so perfectly Jilly Cooper it might not have been accurate, except it certainly was real because a major newspaper ran an appeal about it at the time: she wrote the entire draft in the early 70s, well before the Romances, brought it into the downtown and misplaced it on a bus. Some texture has been intentionally omitted of this tale – what, for instance, was so significant in the West End that you would leave the sole version of your manuscript on a public transport, which is not that far from leaving your baby on a train? Certainly an meeting, but which type?

Cooper was prone to amp up her own disorder and clumsiness