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The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the 88 years old, achieved sales of eleven million copies of her many sweeping books over her five-decade writing career. Beloved by every sensible person over a particular age (forty-five), she was introduced to a modern audience last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Devoted fans would have preferred to watch the Rutshire chronicles in order: commencing with Riders, initially released in 1985, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, charmer, horse rider, is first introduced. But that’s a side note – what was notable about viewing Rivals as a complete series was how effectively Cooper’s universe had remained relevant. The chronicles captured the eighties: the broad shoulders and puffball skirts; the preoccupation with social class; the upper class looking down on the flashy new money, both dismissing everyone else while they complained about how warm their champagne was; the sexual politics, with harassment and assault so commonplace they were virtually figures in their own right, a duo you could rely on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have inhabited this age fully, she was never the proverbial fish not noticing the ocean because it’s all around. She had a compassion and an perceptive wisdom that you might not expect from listening to her speak. All her creations, from the dog to the horse to her parents to her international student's relative, was always “utterly charming” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got groped and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s surprising how OK it is in many more highbrow books of the time.

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 classes more by their mores. The middle classes anxiously contemplated about all things, all the time – what other people might think, mainly – and the aristocracy didn’t bother with “such things”. She was raunchy, at times very much, but her prose was never vulgar.

She’d recount her upbringing in storybook prose: “Daddy went to battle and Mother was extremely anxious”. They were both absolutely stunning, participating in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper replicated in her own union, to a editor of war books, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was 27, the union wasn’t without hiccups (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was never less than comfortable giving people the formula for a successful union, which is squeaky bed but (big reveal), they’re squeaking with all the joy. He never read her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel worse. She wasn't bothered, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be caught reading war chronicles.

Forever keep a diary – it’s very challenging, when you’re mid-twenties, to remember what being 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance collection, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you came to Cooper backwards, having started in Rutshire, the initial books, AKA “the books named after upper-class women” – also Imogen and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every hero feeling like a test-run for Rupert, every heroine a little bit drippy. Plus, line for line (I can't verify statistically), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit uptight on matters of propriety, women always fretting that men would think they’re loose, men saying batshit things about why they preferred virgins (in much the same way, seemingly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the first to break a jar of Nescafé). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these novels at a formative age. I believed for a while that that is what the upper class really thought.

They were, however, remarkably precisely constructed, successful romances, which is considerably tougher than it appears. You lived Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s pissy in-laws, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an desperate moment to a lottery win of the soul, and you could not ever, even in the early days, put your finger on how she managed it. At one moment you’d be smiling at her meticulously detailed descriptions of the bed linen, the following moment you’d have tears in your eyes and no idea how they got there.

Writing Wisdom

Inquired how to be a writer, Cooper frequently advised the kind of thing that the famous author would have said, if he could have been inclined to guide a novice: utilize all five of your senses, say how things aromatic and seemed and audible and tactile and flavored – it really lifts the narrative. 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 primary realizations you notice, in the more extensive, densely peopled books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just a single protagonist, all with very upper-class 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 man and a woman, you can detect in the dialogue.

A Literary Mystery

The historical account of Riders was so pitch-perfectly Jilly Cooper it might not have been real, except it absolutely is factual because London’s Evening Standard published a notice about it at the period: she finished the entire draft in 1970, well before the first books, carried it into the downtown and left it on a vehicle. Some context has been purposely excluded of this story – what, for case, was so crucial in the West End that you would abandon the unique draft of your manuscript on a train, which is not that different from abandoning your child on a transport? Certainly an rendezvous, but which type?

Cooper was prone to embellish her own disorder and ineptitude