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The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the age of 88, racked up sales of 11m copies of her assorted epic books over her five-decade writing career. Adored by all discerning readers over a particular age (45), she was brought to a new generation last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Cooper purists would have preferred to watch the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: commencing with Riders, first published in 1985, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, philanderer, horse rider, is debuts. But that’s a sidebar – what was remarkable about seeing Rivals as a binge-watch was how effectively Cooper’s universe had remained relevant. The chronicles encapsulated the 1980s: the power dressing and bubble skirts; the obsession with class; the upper class sneering at the ostentatious newly wealthy, both overlooking everyone else while they quibbled about how warm their sparkling wine was; the sexual politics, with inappropriate behavior and assault so everyday they were virtually figures in their own right, a double act you could count on to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have inhabited this period totally, 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 listening to her speak. Every character, from the canine to the pony to her family to her French exchange’s brother, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got groped and more 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 well-to-do, which for real-world terms meant that her parent had to hold down a job, but she’d have defined the strata more by their customs. The middle-class people fretted about every little detail, all the time – what other people might think, primarily – and the elite didn’t bother with “such things”. She was risqué, at times incredibly so, but her dialogue was always refined.

She’d narrate her upbringing in fairytale terms: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mom was extremely anxious”. They were both utterly beautiful, involved in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper replicated in her own union, to a editor of military histories, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was in his late twenties, the union wasn’t without hiccups (he was a philanderer), but she was never less than confident giving people the recipe for a blissful partnership, which is creaking bed springs but (key insight), 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 worse. She didn’t mind, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be caught reading military history.

Forever keep a journal – it’s very challenging, when you’re twenty-five, to remember what twenty-four felt like

Early Works

Prudence (the late 70s) was the fifth book in the Romance collection, which started with Emily in 1975. If you approached Cooper backwards, having begun in the main series, the early novels, also known as “the books named after posh girls” – also Octavia and Harriet – were near misses, every male lead feeling like a test-run for Rupert, every main character a little bit weak. Plus, chapter for chapter (I haven’t actually run the numbers), there was less sex in them. They were a bit uptight on matters of modesty, women always worrying that men would think they’re immoral, men saying batshit things about why they preferred virgins (in much the same way, ostensibly, as a real man always wants to be the initial to unseal a jar of Nescafé). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these novels at a young age. I assumed for a while that that’s what affluent individuals actually believed.

They were, however, incredibly tightly written, successful romances, which is considerably tougher than it appears. You experienced Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s difficult in-laws, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could guide you from an hopeless moment to a jackpot of the heart, and you could never, even in the early days, pinpoint how she did it. Suddenly you’d be laughing at her highly specific accounts of the bed linen, the next you’d have tears in your eyes and uncertainty how they appeared.

Literary Guidance

Asked how to be a writer, Cooper would often state the kind of thing that the famous author would have said, if he could have been arsed to help out a aspiring writer: utilize all 5 of your perceptions, say how things scented and seemed and audible and touched and palatable – it significantly enhances the narrative. But probably more useful was: “Forever keep a notebook – it’s very hard, when you’re 25, to remember what twenty-four felt like.” That’s one of the first things you notice, in the more detailed, character-rich books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just one, all with very upper-class names, unless they’re Stateside, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an years apart of several years, between two siblings, between a gentleman and a woman, you can perceive in the speech.

A Literary Mystery

The origin story of Riders was so pitch-perfectly characteristically Cooper it couldn't possibly have been accurate, except it absolutely is real because a major newspaper published a notice about it at the era: she wrote the entire draft in the early 70s, long before the Romances, brought it into the West End and forgot it on a bus. Some detail has been purposely excluded of this story – what, for case, was so important in the West End that you would forget the unique draft of your novel on a bus, which is not that far from leaving your child on a transport? Undoubtedly an rendezvous, but what kind?

Cooper was wont to amp up her own disorder and ineptitude