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The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the 88 years old, achieved sales of 11 million books of her various epic books over her half-century literary career. Adored by all discerning readers over a particular age (forty-five), she was introduced to a new generation last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Longtime readers would have liked to view the Rutshire chronicles in order: commencing with Riders, first published in 1985, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, charmer, horse rider, is initially presented. But that’s a side note – what was remarkable about watching Rivals as a box set was how well Cooper’s fictional realm had stood the test of time. The chronicles captured the 1980s: the shoulder pads and bubble skirts; the fixation on status; nobility looking down on the ostentatious newly wealthy, both overlooking everyone else while they complained about how warm their sparkling wine was; the intimate power struggles, with inappropriate behavior and abuse so routine they were virtually characters in their own right, a pair you could count on to drive the narrative forward.

While Cooper might have inhabited this period fully, she was never the proverbial fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a empathy and an perceptive wisdom that you could easily miss from listening to her speak. Every character, from the dog to the equine to her mother and father to her French exchange’s brother, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got assaulted and further in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s astonishing how OK it is in many far more literary books of the period.

Class and Character

She was affluent middle-class, which for all intents and purposes meant that her father had to work for a living, but she’d have characterized the social classes more by their customs. The middle classes anxiously contemplated about everything, all the time – what other people might think, mostly – and the aristocracy didn’t give a … well “such things”. She was raunchy, at times very much, but her dialogue was never vulgar.

She’d narrate her upbringing in idyllic language: “Daddy went to battle and Mom was extremely anxious”. They were both absolutely stunning, involved in a enduring romance, and this Cooper emulated in her own marriage, to a businessman of military histories, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was twenty-seven, the relationship wasn’t smooth sailing (he was a philanderer), but she was consistently comfortable giving people the secret for a blissful partnership, which is creaking bed springs but (crucial point), they’re creaking with all the joy. He didn't read her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel unwell. She took no offense, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be spotted reading military history.

Forever keep a notebook – it’s very hard, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what being 24 felt like

Early Works

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance series, which started with Emily in the mid-70s. If you discovered Cooper from the later works, having started in the main series, the initial books, alternatively called “those ones named after affluent ladies” – also Bella and Harriet – were almost there, every protagonist feeling like a test-run for Rupert, every main character a little bit drippy. Plus, line for line (I haven’t actually run the numbers), there was less sex in them. They were a bit conservative on topics of propriety, women always worrying that men would think they’re promiscuous, men saying batshit things about why they favored virgins (comparably, seemingly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the primary to break a tin of Nescafé). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these books at a young age. I assumed for a while that that was what posh people genuinely felt.

They were, however, incredibly precisely constructed, high-functioning romances, which is much harder than it seems. You felt Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s pissy in-laws, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an all-is-lost moment to a jackpot of the heart, and you could not ever, even in the early days, put your finger on how she managed it. At one moment you’d be chuckling at her meticulously detailed descriptions of the bedding, the subsequently you’d have emotional response and uncertainty how they got there.

Literary Guidance

Asked how to be a novelist, Cooper used to say the type of guidance that the famous author would have said, if he could have been bothered to assist a beginner: use all five of your perceptions, say how things scented and seemed and heard and felt and flavored – it really lifts the writing. But perhaps more practical was: “Constantly keep a notebook – it’s very hard, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you notice, in the more extensive, character-rich books, which have 17 heroines rather than just one, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re Stateside, in which case they’re called a simple moniker. Even an generational gap of four years, between two sisters, between a male and a woman, you can perceive in the dialogue.

The Lost Manuscript

The origin story of Riders was so exactly characteristically Cooper it couldn't possibly have been accurate, except it absolutely is real because London’s Evening Standard published a notice about it at the period: she finished the whole manuscript in 1970, prior to the first books, carried it into the downtown and misplaced it on a bus. Some context has been deliberately left out of this anecdote – what, for instance, was so significant in the city that you would leave the sole version of your manuscript on a bus, which is not that different from leaving your baby on a railway? Surely an rendezvous, but what kind?

Cooper was prone to exaggerate her own messiness and haplessness