🔗 Share this article

Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the age of 88, achieved sales of 11 million copies of her assorted epic books over her half-century literary career. Cherished by all discerning readers over a specific age (mid-forties), she was presented to a new generation last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Longtime readers would have wanted to view the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: starting with Riders, initially released in the mid-80s, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, heartbreaker, rider, is initially presented. But that’s a sidebar – what was remarkable about watching Rivals as a box set was how brilliantly Cooper’s universe had aged. The chronicles captured the 1980s: the power dressing and puffball skirts; the obsession with class; aristocrats looking down on the ostentatious newly wealthy, both dismissing everyone else while they snipped about how lukewarm their sparkling wine was; the gender dynamics, with unwanted advances and assault so commonplace they were virtually characters in their own right, a double act you could rely on to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have lived in this age completely, she was never the proverbial fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s ubiquitous. She had a humanity and an perceptive wisdom that you might not expect from her public persona. All her creations, from the canine to the equine to her mother and father to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got harassed and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s remarkable how OK it is in many far more literary books of the era.

Background and Behavior

She was affluent middle-class, which for real-world terms meant that her parent had to work for a living, but she’d have defined the social classes more by their customs. The middle classes fretted about every little detail, all the time – what others might think, primarily – and the elite didn’t give a … well “nonsense”. She was risqué, at times incredibly so, but her prose was always refined.

She’d describe her family life in storybook prose: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mom was deeply concerned”. They were both utterly beautiful, engaged in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper mirrored in her own union, to a publisher of historical accounts, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was in his late twenties, the union wasn’t without hiccups (he was a philanderer), but she was never less than comfortable giving people the formula for a successful union, which is squeaky bed but (crucial point), they’re noisy with all the joy. He didn't read her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel more ill. She wasn't bothered, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be caught reading battle accounts.

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

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance novels, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you approached Cooper from the later works, having commenced in the main series, the Romances, AKA “those ones named after affluent ladies” – also Imogen and Harriet – were almost there, every protagonist feeling like a trial version 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 reserved on issues of modesty, women always worrying that men would think they’re immoral, men saying ridiculous comments about why they preferred virgins (comparably, seemingly, as a genuine guy always wants to be the first to unseal a jar of coffee). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these stories at a impressionable age. I assumed for a while that that is what posh people actually believed.

They were, however, extremely tightly written, effective romances, which is much harder than it seems. You felt Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s annoying family-by-marriage, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could take you from an desperate moment to a lottery win of the soul, and you could never, even in the initial stages, identify how she did it. At one moment you’d be smiling at her meticulously detailed depictions of the sheets, the next you’d have tears in your eyes and no idea how they got there.

Authorial Advice

Questioned how to be a writer, Cooper would often state the sort of advice that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been bothered to guide a novice: use all all of your senses, say how things aromatic and appeared and sounded and felt and palatable – it significantly enhances the writing. But likely more helpful was: “Forever keep a notebook – it’s very challenging, when you’re mid-twenties, to remember what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you notice, in the longer, more populated books, which have numerous female leads rather than just a single protagonist, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re American, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an years apart of four years, between two siblings, between a man and a female, you can detect in the conversation.

The Lost Manuscript

The origin story of Riders was so perfectly Jilly Cooper it can’t possibly have been accurate, except it definitely is true because a London paper published a notice about it at the time: she wrote the whole manuscript in the early 70s, well before the first books, took it into the downtown and misplaced it on a vehicle. Some detail has been intentionally omitted of this tale – what, for example, was so significant in the urban area that you would leave the only copy of your manuscript on a bus, which is not that far from forgetting your infant on a train? Surely an meeting, but what sort?

Cooper was inclined to amp up her own chaos and clumsiness