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The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the 88 years old, sold 11 million copies of her assorted sweeping books over her five-decade career in writing. Cherished by all discerning readers over a specific age (mid-forties), she was brought to a younger audience last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Longtime readers would have liked to watch the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: starting 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 box set was how brilliantly Cooper’s fictional realm had remained relevant. The chronicles distilled the eighties: the shoulder pads and puffball skirts; the fixation on status; the upper class disdaining the ostentatious newly wealthy, both dismissing everyone else while they complained about how warm their champagne was; the intimate power struggles, with inappropriate behavior and abuse so routine they were practically characters in their own right, a pair you could count on to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have lived in this era fully, she was never the typical fish not noticing the ocean because it’s ubiquitous. She had a empathy and an observational intelligence that you maybe wouldn’t guess from listening to her speak. Every character, from the canine to the equine to her mother and father to her international student's relative, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got assaulted and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s surprising how acceptable it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the time.

Class and Character

She was affluent middle-class, which for practical purposes meant that her parent had to work for a living, but she’d have described the social classes more by their mores. The middle classes worried about everything, all the time – what society might think, mainly – and the upper classes didn’t bother with “stuff”. She was risqué, at times incredibly so, but her language was always refined.

She’d recount her childhood in idyllic language: “Daddy went to Dunkirk and Mom was deeply concerned”. They were both absolutely stunning, participating in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper replicated in her own partnership, to a editor of war books, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was twenty-seven, the marriage wasn’t perfect (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was never less than confident giving people the secret for a blissful partnership, which is noisy mattress but (crucial point), they’re squeaking with all the joy. He never read her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel worse. She didn’t mind, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading military history.

Forever keep a diary – it’s very challenging, when you’re mid-twenties, to recollect what twenty-four felt like

Initial Novels

Prudence (1978) was the fifth book in the Romance collection, which began with Emily in the mid-70s. If you discovered Cooper backwards, having commenced in Rutshire, the early novels, also known as “the novels named after posh girls” – also Bella and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every male lead feeling like a test-run for Rupert, every heroine a little bit weak. Plus, page for page (I haven’t actually run the numbers), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit reserved on matters of decorum, women always fretting that men would think they’re promiscuous, men saying batshit things about why they liked virgins (in much the same way, apparently, as a true gentleman always wants to be the first to open a container of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these books at a young age. I thought for a while that that’s what posh people really thought.

They were, however, extremely tightly written, high-functioning romances, which is considerably tougher than it seems. You felt Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s pissy relatives, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an desperate moment to a lottery win of the soul, and you could not once, even in the initial stages, identify how she did it. One minute you’d be laughing at her highly specific accounts of the sheets, the next you’d have emotional response and no idea how they appeared.

Literary Guidance

Inquired how to be a author, Cooper frequently advised the type of guidance that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been arsed to guide a novice: utilize all five of your senses, say how things smelled and looked and audible and felt and tasted – it significantly enhances the prose. But perhaps more practical was: “Constantly keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re mid-twenties, to recollect what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you observe, in the longer, densely peopled books, which have 17 heroines rather than just a single protagonist, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an years apart of four years, between two sisters, between a man and a lady, you can detect in the dialogue.

An Author's Tale

The backstory of Riders was so perfectly typical of the author it couldn't possibly have been accurate, except it definitely is true because a major newspaper ran an appeal about it at the period: she finished the entire draft in 1970, well before the first books, brought it into the downtown and left it on a bus. Some detail has been purposely excluded of this story – what, for case, was so significant in the West End that you would leave the only copy of your book on a bus, which is not that unlike forgetting your infant on a transport? Surely an meeting, but which type?

Cooper was wont to amp up her own chaos and clumsiness