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The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the age of 88, achieved sales of 11 million volumes of her many grand books over her five-decade literary career. Adored by every sensible person over a certain age (45), she was introduced to a younger audience last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Devoted fans would have liked to view the Rutshire chronicles in order: beginning with Riders, originally published in 1985, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, philanderer, equestrian, is initially presented. But that’s a sidebar – what was notable about seeing Rivals as a box set was how well Cooper’s fictional realm had remained relevant. The chronicles distilled the 1980s: the broad shoulders and puffball skirts; the obsession with class; nobility sneering at the flashy new money, both dismissing everyone else while they quibbled about how lukewarm their bubbly was; the intimate power struggles, with unwanted advances and misconduct so routine they were almost characters in their own right, a double act you could trust to drive the narrative forward.

While Cooper might have occupied this era completely, she was never the typical fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s all around. She had a compassion and an keen insight that you could easily miss from listening to her speak. Every character, from the pet to the horse to her mother and father to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “utterly charming” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got harassed and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s surprising how OK it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the period.

Social Strata and Personality

She was well-to-do, which for real-world terms meant that her dad had to work for a living, but she’d have defined the social classes more by their values. The middle classes anxiously contemplated about all things, all the time – what society might think, primarily – and the aristocracy didn’t bother with “stuff”. She was risqué, at times extremely, but her dialogue was always refined.

She’d narrate her upbringing in storybook prose: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mom was deeply concerned”. They were both absolutely stunning, involved in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper emulated in her own marriage, to a businessman of war books, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was twenty-seven, the relationship wasn’t without hiccups (he was a unfaithful type), but she was always comfortable giving people the recipe for a blissful partnership, which is noisy mattress but (crucial point), they’re squeaking with all the mirth. He never read her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had flu, and said it made him feel more ill. She took no offense, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading military history.

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

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth book in the Romance series, which started with Emily in the mid-70s. If you discovered Cooper in reverse, having commenced in Rutshire, the initial books, alternatively called “those ones named after upper-class women” – also Octavia and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every hero feeling like a trial version for Rupert, every main character a little bit insipid. Plus, page for page (Without exact data), there was less sex in them. They were a bit uptight on matters of decorum, women always being anxious that men would think they’re loose, men saying batshit things about why they liked virgins (similarly, apparently, as a genuine guy always wants to be the primary to open a container of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these stories at a young age. I believed for a while that that was what affluent individuals really thought.

They were, however, remarkably precisely constructed, successful romances, which is much harder than it seems. You experienced Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s difficult family-by-marriage, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an desperate moment to a lottery win of the emotions, and you could never, even in the early days, put your finger on how she managed it. At one moment you’d be smiling at her highly specific descriptions of the bed linen, the subsequently you’d have emotional response and no idea how they got there.

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 inclined to assist a beginner: use all five of your perceptions, say how things aromatic and looked and sounded and tactile and tasted – it significantly enhances the prose. But likely more helpful was: “Forever keep a notebook – it’s very hard, when you’re 25, to recall what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you notice, in the longer, 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 common name. Even an years apart of four years, between two relatives, between a male and a woman, you can hear in the speech.

The Lost Manuscript

The backstory of Riders was so exactly Jilly Cooper it couldn't possibly have been accurate, except it absolutely is true because London’s Evening Standard published a notice about it at the time: she completed the entire draft in 1970, well before the early novels, carried it into the city center and forgot it on a vehicle. Some detail has been deliberately left out of this anecdote – what, for instance, was so important in the city that you would forget the unique draft of your novel on a bus, which is not that unlike abandoning your infant on a railway? Surely an assignation, but what kind?

Cooper was inclined to amp up her own chaos and clumsiness