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Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the 88 years of age, achieved sales of eleven million copies of her assorted sweeping books over her half-century literary career. Adored by anyone with any sense over a particular age (forty-five), she was brought to a younger audience last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Devoted fans would have wanted to see the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: commencing with Riders, first published in 1985, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, heartbreaker, rider, is initially presented. But that’s a side note – what was striking about watching Rivals as a binge-watch was how effectively Cooper’s universe had remained relevant. The chronicles distilled the 1980s: the shoulder pads and bubble skirts; the fixation on status; the upper class looking down on the Technicolored nouveau riche, both dismissing everyone else while they complained about how warm their bubbly was; the gender dynamics, with inappropriate behavior and misconduct so routine they were almost personas in their own right, a duo you could trust to advance the story.

While Cooper might have inhabited this era completely, she was never the typical fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s ubiquitous. She had a empathy and an keen insight that you maybe wouldn’t guess from listening to her speak. All her creations, from the dog to the pony to her family to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got assaulted and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s surprising how OK it is in many far more literary books of the period.

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 characterized the social classes more by their customs. The middle classes anxiously contemplated about all things, all the time – what others might think, mostly – and the elite didn’t give a … well “such things”. She was raunchy, at times very much, but her dialogue was always refined.

She’d recount her childhood in idyllic language: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mom was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both completely gorgeous, engaged in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper emulated in her own marriage, to a publisher of war books, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was twenty-seven, the relationship wasn’t smooth sailing (he was a unfaithful type), but she was never less than at ease giving people the recipe for a blissful partnership, which is creaking bed springs but (big reveal), they’re squeaking with all the joy. He avoided reading her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel unwell. She wasn't bothered, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading battle accounts.

Forever keep a journal – it’s very hard, when you’re mid-twenties, to recollect what age 24 felt like

Initial Novels

Prudence (the late 70s) was the fifth book in the Romance series, which began with Emily in the mid-70s. If you came to Cooper backwards, having commenced in the main series, the initial books, also known as “the novels named after posh girls” – also Bella and Harriet – were near misses, every hero feeling like a test-run for Rupert, every heroine a little bit drippy. Plus, chapter for chapter (I can't verify statistically), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit uptight on matters of propriety, women always fretting that men would think they’re immoral, men saying ridiculous comments about why they favored virgins (in much the same way, apparently, as a genuine guy always wants to be the initial to open a jar of Nescafé). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these books at a young age. I assumed for a while that that was what the upper class genuinely felt.

They were, however, incredibly well-crafted, successful romances, which is considerably tougher than it sounds. You felt Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s difficult relatives, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an all-is-lost moment to a windfall of the heart, and you could never, even in the initial stages, identify how she achieved it. Suddenly you’d be smiling at her incredibly close depictions of the bedding, the subsequently you’d have watery eyes and uncertainty how they got there.

Literary Guidance

Questioned how to be a author, Cooper used to say the kind of thing that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been bothered to help out a novice: utilize all five of your senses, say how things scented and appeared and sounded and tactile and palatable – it significantly enhances the prose. But probably more useful was: “Always keep a journal – it’s very challenging, when you’re 25, to remember what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you detect, in the more detailed, densely peopled books, which have numerous female leads rather than just one, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an years apart of a few years, between two relatives, between a man and a lady, you can hear in the conversation.

An Author's Tale

The origin story of Riders was so perfectly typical of the author it can’t possibly have been true, except it definitely is real because a major newspaper ran an appeal about it at the era: she completed the whole manuscript in 1970, prior to the early novels, brought it into the West End and misplaced it on a public transport. Some context has been purposely excluded of this story – what, for case, was so crucial in the urban area that you would abandon the sole version of your novel on a public transport, which is not that unlike leaving your infant on a transport? Undoubtedly an meeting, but which type?

Cooper was prone to amp up her own chaos and ineptitude