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The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the age of 88, achieved sales of eleven million books of her many grand books over her half-century career in writing. Cherished by all discerning readers over a specific age (45), she was introduced to a new generation last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Cooper purists would have liked to watch the Rutshire chronicles in order: starting with Riders, originally published in 1985, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, philanderer, horse rider, is debuts. But that’s a minor point – what was notable about seeing Rivals as a complete series was how brilliantly Cooper’s world had aged. The chronicles captured the 80s: the shoulder pads and voluminous skirts; the fixation on status; the upper class sneering at the ostentatious newly wealthy, both ignoring everyone else while they quibbled about how warm their sparkling wine was; the sexual politics, with unwanted advances and misconduct so everyday they were practically characters in their own right, a double act you could rely on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have lived in this period completely, she was never the classic fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a compassion and an keen insight that you maybe wouldn’t guess from listening to her speak. Every character, from the dog to the pony 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 acceptable – it’s surprising how OK it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the time.

Class and Character

She was well-to-do, which for real-world terms meant that her parent had to earn an income, but she’d have characterized the classes more by their values. The middle-class people fretted about every little detail, all the time – what other people might think, mainly – and the upper classes didn’t care a … well “such things”. She was risqué, at times extremely, but her language was never vulgar.

She’d narrate her upbringing in fairytale terms: “Daddy went to battle and Mother was deeply concerned”. They were both absolutely stunning, participating in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper emulated in her own marriage, to a businessman of war books, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was 27, the relationship wasn’t smooth sailing (he was a unfaithful type), but she was never less than comfortable giving people the secret for a happy marriage, which is noisy mattress but (key insight), they’re creaking with all the mirth. He avoided reading her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel worse. She didn’t mind, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be caught reading war chronicles.

Forever keep a diary – it’s very challenging, when you’re mid-twenties, to recall what age 24 felt like

Early Works

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance novels, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you came to Cooper in reverse, having started in her later universe, the initial books, also known as “those ones named after posh girls” – also Octavia and Harriet – were near misses, every male lead feeling like a trial version for the iconic character, every heroine a little bit insipid. Plus, chapter for chapter (I haven’t actually run the numbers), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit reserved on matters of decorum, women always fretting that men would think they’re loose, men saying batshit things about why they preferred virgins (in much the same way, seemingly, as a genuine guy always wants to be the first to unseal a tin of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d suggest reading these books at a formative age. I assumed for a while that that is what posh people genuinely felt.

They were, however, incredibly well-crafted, high-functioning romances, which is far more difficult than it appears. You felt Harriet’s surprise baby, Bella’s difficult relatives, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could transport you from an hopeless moment to a windfall of the soul, and you could not ever, even in the initial stages, identify how she achieved it. Suddenly you’d be chuckling at her meticulously detailed accounts of the bedding, the next you’d have watery eyes and little understanding how they appeared.

Literary Guidance

Asked how to be a author, Cooper would often state the kind of thing that Ernest Hemingway would have said, if he could have been inclined to guide a aspiring writer: use all five of your faculties, say how things scented and looked and sounded and felt and palatable – it significantly enhances the prose. But perhaps more practical was: “Forever keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re 25, to recollect what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you detect, in the longer, character-rich books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just a single protagonist, all with very upper-class 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 female, you can hear in the speech.

A Literary Mystery

The backstory of Riders was so pitch-perfectly typical of the author it couldn't possibly have been accurate, except it certainly was true because London’s Evening Standard published a notice about it at the period: she finished the whole manuscript in 1970, prior to the early novels, brought it into the West End and misplaced it on a public transport. Some detail has been purposely excluded of this tale – what, for instance, was so crucial in the city that you would leave the sole version of your book on a public transport, which is not that different from abandoning your child on a train? Undoubtedly an rendezvous, but what sort?

Cooper was prone to embellish her own chaos and ineptitude