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The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the 88 years old, sold eleven million copies of her assorted sweeping books over her 50-year writing career. Beloved by all discerning readers over a particular age (45), she was brought to a new generation last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Longtime readers would have preferred to see the Rutshire chronicles in order: starting with Riders, initially released in 1985, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, philanderer, horse rider, is initially presented. But that’s a side note – what was notable about viewing Rivals as a box set was how brilliantly Cooper’s world had aged. The chronicles captured the 80s: the shoulder pads and bubble skirts; the fixation on status; aristocrats looking down on the ostentatious newly wealthy, both dismissing everyone else while they snipped about how room-temperature their bubbly was; the intimate power struggles, with inappropriate behavior and abuse so everyday they were almost personas in their own right, a duo you could trust to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have occupied this era fully, she was never the typical fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s all around. She had a empathy and an keen insight that you might not expect from hearing her talk. Every character, from the dog to the horse to her parents to her French exchange’s brother, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got harassed and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s surprising how acceptable it is in many more highbrow books of the time.

Background and Behavior

She was upper-middle-class, which for all intents and purposes meant that her parent had to work for a living, but she’d have described the strata more by their customs. The middle classes fretted about every little detail, all the time – what other people might think, primarily – and the aristocracy didn’t care a … well “stuff”. She was raunchy, at times extremely, but her dialogue was never vulgar.

She’d recount her upbringing in storybook prose: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mother was deeply concerned”. They were both completely gorgeous, involved in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper mirrored in her own partnership, to a editor of historical accounts, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was in his late twenties, the marriage wasn’t smooth sailing (he was a philanderer), but she was never less than comfortable giving people the formula for a successful union, which is creaking bed springs but (key insight), they’re noisy with all the laughter. He never read her books – he picked up 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 caught reading war chronicles.

Constantly keep a notebook – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what age 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance series, which started with Emily in 1975. If you approached Cooper in reverse, having begun in the main series, the initial books, AKA “the books named after affluent ladies” – also Bella and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every hero feeling like a trial version for Rupert, every female lead a little bit weak. Plus, page for page (I can't verify statistically), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit reserved on topics of propriety, women always being anxious that men would think they’re promiscuous, men saying batshit things about why they preferred virgins (in much the same way, apparently, as a genuine guy always wants to be the primary to unseal a tin of coffee). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these novels at a formative age. I assumed for a while that that was what the upper class actually believed.

They were, however, incredibly precisely constructed, effective romances, which is far more difficult than it seems. You felt Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s pissy relatives, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could transport you from an desperate moment to a jackpot of the heart, and you could not once, even in the initial stages, identify how she managed it. One minute you’d be smiling at her meticulously detailed descriptions of the bed linen, the subsequently you’d have tears in your eyes and little understanding how they appeared.

Authorial Advice

Asked how to be a author, Cooper would often state the type of guidance that Ernest Hemingway would have said, if he could have been bothered to assist a aspiring writer: employ all 5 of your senses, say how things smelled and looked and heard and tactile and palatable – it really lifts the narrative. But likely more helpful 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 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 Stateside, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an generational gap of a few years, between two sisters, between a male and a lady, you can hear in the conversation.

A Literary Mystery

The origin story of Riders was so perfectly typical of the author it couldn't possibly have been accurate, except it definitely is true because a major newspaper made a public request about it at the time: she wrote the entire draft in 1970, long before the first books, carried it into the downtown and misplaced it on a bus. Some context has been intentionally omitted of this anecdote – what, for example, was so significant in the West End that you would abandon the sole version of your manuscript on a train, which is not that far from abandoning your infant on a train? Undoubtedly an meeting, but what kind?

Cooper was prone to embellish her own messiness and haplessness