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The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 88, sold 11m copies of her assorted sweeping books over her 50-year career in writing. Cherished by all discerning readers over a certain age (forty-five), she was presented to a new generation last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Devoted fans would have liked to see the Rutshire chronicles in order: beginning with Riders, initially released in the mid-80s, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, heartbreaker, horse rider, is initially presented. But that’s a sidebar – what was notable about watching Rivals as a box set was how effectively Cooper’s universe had stood the test of time. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the power dressing and puffball skirts; the fixation on status; nobility disdaining the Technicolored nouveau riche, both ignoring everyone else while they quibbled about how lukewarm their champagne was; the sexual politics, with unwanted advances and misconduct so everyday they were almost personas in their own right, a double act you could trust to advance the story.

While Cooper might have occupied this age fully, she was never the typical fish not noticing the ocean because it’s all around. She had a compassion and an observational intelligence that you could easily miss from listening to her speak. Everyone, from the canine to the horse to her parents to her international student's relative, was always “utterly charming” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got assaulted and further in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s astonishing how acceptable it is in many far more literary books of the time.

Class and Character

She was upper-middle-class, which for practical purposes meant that her parent had to hold down a job, but she’d have characterized the classes more by their mores. The middle-class people worried about all things, all the time – what society might think, primarily – and the upper classes didn’t bother with “such things”. She was risqué, at times incredibly so, but her language was always refined.

She’d recount her family life in storybook prose: “Father went to battle and Mom was deeply concerned”. They were both completely gorgeous, engaged in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper mirrored in her own marriage, to a businessman of historical accounts, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was 27, the marriage wasn’t perfect (he was a philanderer), but she was always comfortable giving people the recipe for a happy marriage, which is creaking bed springs but (key insight), they’re squeaking with all the laughter. He avoided reading her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had flu, and said it made him feel unwell. She took no offense, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading military history.

Forever keep a diary – it’s very challenging, when you’re 25, to remember what age 24 felt like

Initial Novels

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance novels, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you came to Cooper in reverse, having started in Rutshire, the Romances, AKA “the books named after posh girls” – also Imogen and Harriet – were almost there, every protagonist feeling like a trial version for Campbell-Black, every main character a little bit insipid. Plus, page for page (Without exact data), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit conservative on topics of decorum, women always being anxious that men would think they’re loose, men saying outrageous statements about why they favored virgins (similarly, ostensibly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the initial to open a tin of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d suggest reading these stories at a young age. I thought for a while that that’s what affluent individuals genuinely felt.

They were, however, incredibly precisely constructed, high-functioning romances, which is considerably tougher than it sounds. You lived Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s annoying family-by-marriage, Emily’s Scottish isolation – Cooper could take you from an hopeless moment to a windfall of the heart, and you could not ever, even in the initial stages, put your finger on how she managed it. At one moment you’d be chuckling at her highly specific accounts of the sheets, the subsequently you’d have watery eyes and uncertainty how they appeared.

Authorial Advice

Questioned how to be a author, Cooper would often state the sort of advice that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been arsed to assist a beginner: utilize all all of your perceptions, say how things smelled and appeared and sounded and touched and palatable – it really lifts the narrative. But likely more helpful was: “Constantly keep a notebook – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to remember what twenty-four felt like.” That’s one of the first things you notice, in the more detailed, character-rich books, which have numerous female leads rather than just one lead, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re American, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an years apart of four years, between two relatives, between a gentleman and a lady, you can perceive in the speech.

An Author's Tale

The backstory of Riders was so perfectly typical of the author it can’t possibly have been real, except it absolutely is real because a major newspaper published a notice about it at the period: she completed the whole manuscript in 1970, prior to the Romances, carried it into the West End and left it on a public transport. Some texture has been purposely excluded of this anecdote – what, for instance, was so important in the city that you would abandon the unique draft of your novel on a bus, which is not that unlike forgetting your infant on a train? Undoubtedly an assignation, but what kind?

Cooper was wont to embellish her own disorder and clumsiness