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Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the age of 88, sold 11m copies of her various sweeping books over her 50-year writing career. Adored by anyone with any sense over a particular age (forty-five), she was introduced to a new generation last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Devoted fans would have liked to watch the Rutshire chronicles in order: commencing with Riders, initially released in 1985, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, charmer, equestrian, is initially presented. But that’s a minor point – what was striking about watching Rivals as a complete series was how effectively Cooper’s world had remained relevant. The chronicles captured the 80s: the power dressing and bubble skirts; the obsession with class; the upper class sneering at the flashy new money, both dismissing everyone else while they complained about how lukewarm their bubbly was; the intimate power struggles, with unwanted advances and misconduct so commonplace they were virtually characters in their own right, a duo you could rely on to drive the narrative forward.

While Cooper might have inhabited this age totally, she was never the classic fish not noticing the ocean because it’s all around. She had a humanity and an keen insight that you maybe wouldn’t guess from listening to her speak. All her creations, from the canine to the equine to her parents to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got harassed and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s remarkable how tolerated it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the era.

Background and Behavior

She was affluent middle-class, which for all intents and purposes meant that her dad had to earn an income, but she’d have defined the strata more by their values. The middle-class people anxiously contemplated about all things, all the time – what other people might think, mainly – and the elite didn’t bother with “such things”. She was spicy, at times incredibly so, but her prose was never vulgar.

She’d narrate her upbringing in idyllic language: “Father went to the war and Mummy was extremely anxious”. They were both utterly beautiful, engaged in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper replicated in her own union, to a editor of military histories, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was in his late twenties, the union wasn’t without hiccups (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was consistently comfortable giving people the secret for a blissful partnership, which is squeaky bed but (big reveal), they’re noisy with all the laughter. He didn't read her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel unwell. She didn’t mind, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be spotted reading military history.

Forever keep a diary – it’s very hard, when you’re mid-twenties, to recall what age 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance novels, which commenced with Emily in the mid-70s. If you discovered Cooper backwards, having begun in Rutshire, the Romances, also known as “the novels named after posh girls” – also Bella and Harriet – were almost there, every protagonist feeling like a trial version for Rupert, every main character a little bit insipid. Plus, page for page (Without exact data), there was less sex in them. They were a bit uptight on topics of modesty, women always being anxious that men would think they’re loose, men saying outrageous statements about why they favored virgins (in much the same way, apparently, as a genuine guy always wants to be the first to unseal a container of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these stories at a formative age. I assumed for a while that that’s what posh people actually believed.

They were, however, incredibly precisely constructed, successful romances, which is considerably tougher than it seems. You lived Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s pissy in-laws, Emily’s Scottish isolation – Cooper could take you from an hopeless moment to a lottery win of the emotions, and you could not ever, even in the beginning, put your finger on how she managed it. One minute you’d be chuckling at her highly specific accounts of the bedding, the following moment you’d have tears in your eyes and no idea how they got there.

Literary Guidance

Asked how to be a novelist, Cooper frequently advised the type of guidance that Ernest Hemingway would have said, if he could have been bothered to assist a beginner: use all all of your faculties, say how things aromatic and looked and heard and touched and flavored – it greatly improves the prose. But probably more useful was: “Always keep a journal – it’s very challenging, when you’re twenty-five, to remember what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the first things you notice, in the more extensive, character-rich books, which have 17 heroines rather than just one lead, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a simple moniker. Even an age difference of four years, between two relatives, between a man and a woman, you can perceive in the conversation.

A Literary Mystery

The historical account of Riders was so exactly typical of the author it might not have been real, except it absolutely is factual because a major newspaper ran an appeal about it at the era: she wrote the entire draft in 1970, prior to the Romances, carried it into the West End and misplaced it on a bus. Some context has been purposely excluded of this anecdote – what, for instance, was so significant in the West End that you would forget the only copy of your book on a bus, which is not that different from leaving your baby on a transport? Undoubtedly an rendezvous, but what kind?

Cooper was inclined to amp up her own chaos and clumsiness