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Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the 88 years of age, sold eleven million books of her many epic books over her half-century literary career. Adored by every sensible person over a specific age (45), she was presented to a modern audience last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Cooper purists would have preferred to view the Rutshire chronicles in sequence: beginning with Riders, first published in the mid-80s, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, philanderer, horse rider, is first introduced. But that’s a minor point – what was striking about seeing Rivals as a box set was how effectively Cooper’s fictional realm had aged. The chronicles captured the eighties: the shoulder pads and puffball skirts; the preoccupation with social class; aristocrats disdaining the Technicolored nouveau riche, both ignoring everyone else while they snipped about how room-temperature their sparkling wine was; the sexual politics, with unwanted advances and abuse so routine they were virtually personas in their own right, a pair you could count on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have inhabited this period completely, she was never the proverbial fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s all around. She had a humanity and an observational intelligence that you might not expect from listening to her speak. All her creations, from the pet to the pony to her parents to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got groped and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s surprising how OK it is in many more highbrow books of the era.

Social Strata and Personality

She was well-to-do, which for all intents and purposes meant that her parent had to earn an income, but she’d have defined the social classes more by their customs. The bourgeoisie anxiously contemplated about all things, all the time – what other people might think, primarily – and the aristocracy didn’t bother with “nonsense”. She was risqué, at times very much, but her prose was never vulgar.

She’d recount her family life in idyllic language: “Dad went to the war and Mom was deeply concerned”. They were both absolutely stunning, engaged in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper replicated in her own union, to a publisher of war books, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was in his late twenties, the marriage wasn’t perfect (he was a philanderer), but she was always comfortable giving people the recipe for a blissful partnership, which is squeaky bed but (big reveal), they’re creaking 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 wasn't bothered, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be spotted reading war chronicles.

Constantly keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to recall what being 24 felt like

Initial Novels

Prudence (1978) was the fifth book in the Romance collection, which started with Emily in 1975. If you discovered Cooper backwards, having started in her later universe, the Romances, AKA “the books named after affluent ladies” – also Octavia and Harriet – were near misses, every male lead feeling like a trial version for Campbell-Black, every heroine a little bit drippy. Plus, page for page (I haven’t actually run the numbers), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit conservative on topics of decorum, women always worrying that men would think they’re loose, men saying outrageous statements about why they liked virgins (in much the same way, apparently, as a genuine guy always wants to be the initial to open a tin of coffee). I don’t know if I’d suggest reading these books at a formative age. I thought for a while that that was what affluent individuals actually believed.

They were, however, incredibly tightly written, high-functioning romances, which is considerably tougher than it sounds. You lived Harriet’s surprise baby, Bella’s pissy relatives, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could transport you from an desperate moment to a windfall of the emotions, and you could not once, even in the early days, pinpoint how she managed it. One minute you’d be chuckling at her meticulously detailed accounts of the bedding, the next you’d have watery eyes and uncertainty how they appeared.

Authorial Advice

Inquired how to be a writer, Cooper would often state the kind of thing that the famous author would have said, if he could have been bothered to guide a novice: utilize all five of your faculties, say how things scented and appeared and sounded and tactile and tasted – it really lifts the writing. But probably more useful was: “Forever keep a notebook – it’s very difficult, when you’re mid-twenties, to remember what twenty-four felt like.” That’s one of the first things you observe, in the longer, densely peopled books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just one, all with very upper-class names, unless they’re Stateside, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an age difference of several years, between two sisters, between a male and a female, you can hear in the conversation.

An Author's Tale

The historical account of Riders was so exactly characteristically Cooper it couldn't possibly have been accurate, except it definitely is real because London’s Evening Standard published a notice about it at the time: she finished the complete book in 1970, well before the Romances, brought it into the West End and misplaced it on a public transport. Some detail has been deliberately left out of this story – what, for example, was so important in the West End that you would forget the unique draft of your manuscript on a train, which is not that unlike abandoning your child on a train? Undoubtedly an meeting, but what sort?

Cooper was inclined to embellish her own messiness and clumsiness