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The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the age of 88, achieved sales of 11m books of her various sweeping books over her 50-year career in writing. Adored by every sensible person over a certain age (forty-five), she was brought to a new generation last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Cooper purists would have liked to view the Rutshire chronicles in order: starting with Riders, first published in 1985, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, heartbreaker, rider, is initially presented. But that’s a sidebar – what was notable about viewing Rivals as a complete series was how effectively Cooper’s fictional realm had stood the test of time. The chronicles captured the eighties: the shoulder pads and puffball skirts; the preoccupation with social class; aristocrats disdaining the flashy new money, both dismissing everyone else while they snipped about how room-temperature their champagne was; the sexual politics, with unwanted advances and assault so everyday they were practically figures in their own right, a pair you could rely on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have occupied this period completely, she was never the typical fish not noticing the ocean because it’s all around. She had a humanity and an keen insight that you might not expect from her public persona. All her creations, from the dog to the horse to her mother and father to her international student's relative, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got harassed and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s surprising how tolerated it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the period.

Background and Behavior

She was well-to-do, which for practical purposes meant that her father had to hold down a job, but she’d have defined the social classes more by their customs. The bourgeoisie fretted about everything, all the time – what society might think, primarily – and the upper classes didn’t care a … well “stuff”. She was spicy, at times extremely, but her prose was never coarse.

She’d recount her upbringing in storybook prose: “Daddy went to Dunkirk and Mummy was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both absolutely stunning, participating in a enduring romance, and this Cooper replicated in her own union, to a businessman of war books, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was twenty-seven, the union wasn’t perfect (he was a philanderer), but she was always confident giving people the formula for a happy marriage, which is squeaky bed but (big reveal), they’re creaking with all the laughter. He didn't read her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had flu, and said it made him feel unwell. She didn’t mind, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be spotted reading war chronicles.

Constantly keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re 25, to recall what being 24 felt like

Initial Novels

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance collection, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you approached Cooper in reverse, having commenced in Rutshire, the early novels, also known as “those ones named after affluent ladies” – also Bella and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every male lead feeling like a test-run for Rupert, every main character a little bit insipid. Plus, page for page (Without exact data), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit reserved on matters of modesty, women always worrying that men would think they’re loose, men saying ridiculous comments about why they liked virgins (comparably, seemingly, as a real man always wants to be the initial to unseal a tin of Nescafé). I don’t know if I’d suggest reading these books at a formative age. I believed for a while that that is what the upper class really thought.

They were, however, remarkably precisely constructed, high-functioning romances, which is considerably tougher than it sounds. You felt Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s difficult relatives, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could transport you from an desperate moment to a lottery win of the emotions, and you could not once, even in the initial stages, put your finger on how she did it. At one moment you’d be smiling at her incredibly close descriptions of the sheets, the subsequently you’d have emotional response and uncertainty how they appeared.

Literary Guidance

Asked how to be a writer, Cooper used to say the kind of thing that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been arsed to help out a aspiring writer: use all 5 of your senses, say how things aromatic and seemed and audible and tactile and palatable – it really lifts the prose. But likely more helpful was: “Constantly keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you detect, in the longer, more populated books, which have numerous female leads rather than just one, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an years apart of a few years, between two siblings, between a man and a woman, you can perceive in the dialogue.

An Author's Tale

The historical account of Riders was so exactly characteristically Cooper it can’t possibly have been accurate, except it certainly was true because London’s Evening Standard ran an appeal about it at the time: she completed the entire draft in the early 70s, long before the first books, took it into the West End and left it on a vehicle. Some detail has been purposely excluded of this tale – what, for case, was so significant in the urban area that you would leave the only copy of your book on a train, which is not that different from forgetting your baby on a railway? Surely an rendezvous, but which type?

Cooper was prone to embellish her own disorder and clumsiness