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Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the age of 88, achieved sales of 11m copies of her assorted grand books over her 50-year literary career. Cherished by every sensible person over a specific age (forty-five), she was brought to a new generation last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Cooper purists would have liked to see the Rutshire chronicles in sequence: commencing with Riders, initially released in 1985, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, charmer, equestrian, is debuts. But that’s a minor point – what was remarkable about watching Rivals as a complete series was how brilliantly Cooper’s fictional realm had remained relevant. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the broad shoulders and voluminous skirts; the obsession with class; aristocrats looking down on the ostentatious newly wealthy, both dismissing everyone else while they snipped about how room-temperature their bubbly was; the gender dynamics, with harassment and abuse so routine they were almost personas in their own right, a double act you could trust to advance the story.

While Cooper might have lived in this age totally, she was never the classic fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a empathy and an perceptive wisdom that you could easily miss from hearing her talk. All her creations, from the pet to the pony to her mother and father to her French exchange’s brother, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got harassed and further in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s astonishing how OK it is in many far more literary books of the time.

Class and Character

She was affluent middle-class, which for real-world terms meant that her dad had to earn an income, but she’d have described the classes more by their values. The middle-class people anxiously contemplated about everything, all the time – what society might think, mostly – and the aristocracy didn’t give a … well “nonsense”. She was raunchy, at times very much, but her prose was never coarse.

She’d describe her upbringing in idyllic language: “Dad went to the war and Mom was deeply concerned”. They were both absolutely stunning, participating in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper replicated in her own marriage, to a publisher of historical accounts, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was twenty-seven, the relationship wasn’t smooth sailing (he was a philanderer), but she was always confident giving people the formula for a blissful partnership, which is noisy mattress but (key insight), they’re noisy with all the mirth. He never read her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel unwell. She took no offense, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be caught reading military history.

Always keep a journal – it’s very hard, when you’re 25, to recall what being 24 felt like

Initial Novels

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance novels, which began with Emily in 1975. If you came to Cooper backwards, having started in her later universe, the Romances, AKA “the books named after affluent ladies” – also Imogen and Harriet – were almost there, every protagonist feeling like a trial version for Rupert, every heroine a little bit drippy. Plus, page for page (Without exact data), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit uptight on topics of modesty, women always worrying that men would think they’re loose, men saying outrageous statements about why they preferred virgins (in much the same way, seemingly, as a genuine guy always wants to be the primary to break a container of coffee). I don’t know if I’d suggest reading these books at a young age. I believed for a while that that’s what the upper class genuinely felt.

They were, however, extremely tightly written, high-functioning romances, which is much harder than it appears. You experienced Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s pissy relatives, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could transport you from an all-is-lost moment to a lottery win of the emotions, and you could not once, even in the early days, identify how she achieved it. One minute you’d be chuckling at her highly specific descriptions of the bedding, the following moment you’d have tears in your eyes and uncertainty how they got there.

Literary Guidance

Asked how to be a author, Cooper would often state the sort of advice that Ernest Hemingway would have said, if he could have been bothered to guide a beginner: use all five of your faculties, say how things scented and appeared and sounded and touched and palatable – it really lifts the narrative. But probably more useful was: “Always keep a notebook – it’s very hard, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you detect, in the more extensive, character-rich books, which have 17 heroines rather than just one lead, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an age difference of four years, between two siblings, between a gentleman and a woman, you can hear in the speech.

The Lost Manuscript

The backstory of Riders was so pitch-perfectly typical of the author it can’t possibly have been accurate, except it certainly was factual because London’s Evening Standard published a notice about it at the period: she wrote the complete book in the early 70s, prior to the first books, brought it into the city center and forgot it on a vehicle. Some context has been intentionally omitted of this anecdote – what, for instance, was so important in the West End that you would forget the sole version of your novel on a bus, which is not that unlike forgetting your infant on a train? Undoubtedly an assignation, but what sort?

Cooper was wont to amp up her own messiness and haplessness