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Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the 88 years of age, achieved sales of 11 million volumes of her many grand books over her 50-year literary career. Adored by every sensible person over a certain age (45), she was brought to a new generation last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Longtime readers would have liked to view the Rutshire chronicles in sequence: starting with Riders, initially released in 1985, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, charmer, horse rider, is first introduced. But that’s a minor point – what was striking about seeing Rivals as a complete series was how well Cooper’s universe had remained relevant. The chronicles captured the 80s: the power dressing and voluminous skirts; the obsession with class; nobility looking down on the flashy new money, both dismissing everyone else while they quibbled about how warm their sparkling wine was; the sexual politics, with harassment and assault so commonplace they were almost characters in their own right, a duo you could rely on to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have inhabited this era completely, she was never the typical fish not noticing the ocean because it’s ubiquitous. She had a humanity and an observational intelligence that you might not expect from listening to her speak. All her creations, from the dog to the horse to her parents to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got harassed and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s astonishing how OK it is in many far more literary books of the era.

Class and Character

She was affluent middle-class, which for practical purposes meant that her father had to earn an income, but she’d have described the strata more by their customs. The middle-class people worried about all things, all the time – what society might think, mainly – and the elite didn’t bother with “nonsense”. She was spicy, at times very much, but her dialogue was always refined.

She’d describe her childhood in fairytale terms: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mom was deeply concerned”. They were both absolutely stunning, involved in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper mirrored in her own union, to a editor of war books, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was twenty-seven, the union wasn’t without hiccups (he was a philanderer), but she was never less than confident giving people the formula for a successful union, which is creaking bed springs but (crucial point), they’re creaking with all the mirth. He never read her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel more ill. She wasn't bothered, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be caught reading war chronicles.

Forever keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re 25, to remember what being 24 felt like

Early Works

Prudence (1978) was the fifth book 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, AKA “those ones named after upper-class women” – also Octavia and Harriet – were almost there, every hero feeling like a test-run for Campbell-Black, every heroine a little bit drippy. Plus, chapter for chapter (I can't verify statistically), there was less sex in them. They were a bit reserved on matters of modesty, women always worrying that men would think they’re promiscuous, men saying batshit things about why they liked virgins (in much the same way, ostensibly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the initial to open a jar of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these stories at a impressionable age. I assumed for a while that that is what posh people actually believed.

They were, however, remarkably well-crafted, high-functioning romances, which is far more difficult than it appears. You lived Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s annoying in-laws, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could transport you from an desperate moment to a windfall of the heart, and you could not ever, even in the beginning, identify how she did it. One minute you’d be chuckling at her incredibly close descriptions of the sheets, the following moment you’d have watery eyes and uncertainty how they appeared.

Writing Wisdom

Asked how to be a author, Cooper would often state the sort of advice that the famous author would have said, if he could have been inclined to help out a aspiring writer: use all 5 of your faculties, say how things aromatic and looked and audible and felt and tasted – it really lifts the writing. But probably more useful was: “Forever keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the first things you observe, in the more extensive, more populated books, which have 17 heroines rather than just one, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re American, in which case they’re called a simple moniker. Even an age difference of several years, between two sisters, between a gentleman and a lady, you can perceive in the conversation.

An Author's Tale

The historical account of Riders was so exactly Jilly Cooper it can’t possibly have been true, except it certainly was true because a London paper published a notice about it at the era: she finished the whole manuscript in 1970, well before the first books, brought it into the city center and forgot it on a vehicle. Some context has been intentionally omitted of this tale – what, for instance, was so significant in the West End that you would leave the sole version of your manuscript on a bus, which is not that different from abandoning your child on a railway? Undoubtedly an meeting, but which type?

Cooper was inclined to embellish her own chaos and ineptitude