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The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the 88 years old, achieved sales of eleven million volumes of her assorted sweeping books over her five-decade career in writing. Beloved by anyone with any sense over a specific age (mid-forties), she was brought to a modern audience last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Cooper purists would have liked to see the Rutshire chronicles in order: beginning with Riders, first published in 1985, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, heartbreaker, equestrian, is initially presented. But that’s a side note – what was remarkable about watching Rivals as a complete series was how well Cooper’s world had aged. The chronicles captured the 80s: the shoulder pads and bubble skirts; the preoccupation with social class; nobility sneering at the Technicolored nouveau riche, both overlooking everyone else while they quibbled about how warm their sparkling wine was; the sexual politics, with inappropriate behavior and misconduct so everyday they were almost characters in their own right, a duo you could trust to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have inhabited this age fully, she was never the typical fish not noticing the ocean because it’s all around. She had a humanity and an perceptive wisdom that you maybe wouldn’t guess from listening to her speak. All her creations, from the dog to the horse to her family to her French exchange’s brother, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “completely exquisite”. People got harassed and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s surprising how acceptable it is in many far more literary books of the time.

Class and Character

She was well-to-do, which for all intents and purposes meant that her dad had to earn an income, but she’d have defined the strata more by their mores. The middle classes fretted about every little detail, all the time – what other people might think, mainly – and the elite didn’t bother with “such things”. She was risqué, at times incredibly so, but her dialogue was never vulgar.

She’d recount her family life in fairytale terms: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mummy was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both completely gorgeous, participating in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper emulated in her own marriage, to a editor of war books, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was 27, the union wasn’t smooth sailing (he was a philanderer), but she was consistently confident giving people the formula for a happy marriage, which is squeaky bed but (crucial point), they’re creaking with all the mirth. He avoided reading her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had flu, and said it made him feel unwell. She didn’t mind, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading war chronicles.

Constantly keep a notebook – it’s very hard, when you’re mid-twenties, to remember what being 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance collection, which commenced with Emily in the mid-70s. If you approached Cooper in reverse, having commenced in the main series, the initial books, AKA “the books named after affluent ladies” – also Bella and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every protagonist feeling like a test-run for the iconic character, every female lead a little bit weak. Plus, chapter for chapter (I haven’t actually run the numbers), 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 immoral, men saying batshit things about why they liked virgins (in much the same way, seemingly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the primary to break a jar of Nescafé). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these novels at a impressionable age. I believed for a while that that was what the upper class really thought.

They were, however, remarkably precisely constructed, high-functioning romances, which is far more difficult than it appears. You experienced Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s difficult in-laws, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could transport you from an desperate moment to a windfall of the heart, and you could never, even in the initial stages, pinpoint how she managed it. At one moment you’d be smiling at her highly specific descriptions of the bedding, the following moment you’d have emotional response and uncertainty how they appeared.

Literary Guidance

Questioned how to be a author, Cooper would often state the kind of thing that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been inclined to help out a novice: use all 5 of your faculties, say how things aromatic and appeared and heard and tactile and tasted – it greatly improves the writing. But probably more useful was: “Forever keep a notebook – it’s very hard, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the first things you notice, in the more extensive, densely peopled books, which have numerous female leads rather than just one lead, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an age difference of several years, between two siblings, between a man and a lady, you can hear in the speech.

An Author's Tale

The historical account of Riders was so pitch-perfectly characteristically Cooper it might not have been real, except it definitely is real because London’s Evening Standard made a public request about it at the period: she finished the whole manuscript in 1970, prior to the first books, brought it into the downtown and forgot it on a vehicle. Some detail has been purposely excluded of this story – what, for instance, was so crucial in the city that you would leave the sole version of your manuscript on a public transport, which is not that unlike forgetting your child on a railway? Undoubtedly an rendezvous, but what kind?

Cooper was wont to embellish her own messiness and clumsiness