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The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the 88 years of age, sold 11 million volumes of her assorted grand books over her half-century writing career. Adored by every sensible person over a specific age (forty-five), she was introduced to a new generation last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Devoted fans would have wanted to see the Rutshire chronicles in sequence: starting with Riders, originally published in 1985, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, philanderer, horse rider, is initially presented. But that’s a minor point – what was notable about viewing Rivals as a box set was how brilliantly Cooper’s fictional realm had stood the test of time. The chronicles encapsulated the 80s: the shoulder pads and puffball skirts; the obsession with class; nobility looking down on the flashy new money, both ignoring everyone else while they snipped about how room-temperature their sparkling wine was; the gender dynamics, with inappropriate behavior and misconduct so routine they were almost figures in their own right, a duo you could rely on to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have inhabited this period completely, she was never the classic fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a humanity and an keen insight that you maybe wouldn’t guess from listening to her speak. All her creations, from the canine to the horse to her family to her international student's relative, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “completely exquisite”. People got harassed and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s astonishing how OK it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the period.

Social Strata and Personality

She was well-to-do, which for all intents and purposes meant that her dad had to work for a living, but she’d have characterized the strata more by their mores. The bourgeoisie anxiously contemplated about everything, all the time – what others might think, primarily – and the aristocracy didn’t give a … well “stuff”. She was spicy, at times very much, but her language was never vulgar.

She’d describe her family life in fairytale terms: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mummy was deeply concerned”. They were both absolutely stunning, engaged in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper replicated in her own marriage, to a businessman of war books, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was in his late twenties, the marriage wasn’t without hiccups (he was a unfaithful type), but she was never less than comfortable giving people the secret for a successful union, which is noisy mattress but (key insight), they’re creaking with all the joy. He didn't read her books – he read Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel more ill. She wasn't bothered, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading military history.

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

Initial Novels

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance novels, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you came to Cooper in reverse, having started in Rutshire, the initial books, AKA “those ones named after upper-class women” – also Bella and Harriet – were almost there, every protagonist feeling like a test-run for Campbell-Black, every heroine a little bit weak. Plus, line for line (I haven’t actually run the numbers), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit conservative on topics of propriety, women always being anxious that men would think they’re loose, men saying batshit things about why they favored virgins (comparably, ostensibly, as a genuine guy always wants to be the first to break a container of Nescafé). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these books at a formative age. I believed for a while that that was what posh people actually believed.

They were, however, extremely precisely constructed, high-functioning romances, which is far more difficult than it appears. You felt Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s annoying family-by-marriage, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could transport you from an all-is-lost moment to a lottery win of the soul, and you could not ever, even in the early days, put your finger on how she did it. Suddenly you’d be laughing at her highly specific accounts of the sheets, the following moment you’d have watery eyes and no idea how they appeared.

Authorial Advice

Questioned how to be a author, Cooper frequently advised the sort of advice that the famous author would have said, if he could have been inclined to help out a aspiring writer: employ all five of your faculties, say how things aromatic and seemed and sounded and touched and tasted – it greatly improves the prose. But probably more useful was: “Always keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re mid-twenties, to recollect what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you detect, in the longer, character-rich books, which have numerous female leads rather than just a single protagonist, all with very upper-class names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an generational gap of several years, between two relatives, between a man and a woman, you can detect in the dialogue.

The Lost Manuscript

The backstory of Riders was so pitch-perfectly characteristically Cooper it might not have been real, except it absolutely is true because a major newspaper published a notice about it at the period: she finished the entire draft in 1970, well before the first books, took it into the city center and left it on a public transport. Some texture has been purposely excluded of this story – what, for case, was so significant in the West End that you would forget the sole version of your novel on a public transport, which is not that unlike forgetting your baby on a transport? Certainly an assignation, but what sort?

Cooper was wont to embellish her own disorder and clumsiness