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The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the 88 years of age, racked up sales of eleven million volumes of her assorted sweeping books over her half-century literary career. Cherished by anyone with any sense over a certain age (45), she was brought to a younger audience last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Devoted fans would have liked to view the Rutshire chronicles in order: commencing with Riders, originally published in the mid-80s, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, heartbreaker, rider, is initially presented. But that’s a sidebar – what was notable about viewing Rivals as a binge-watch was how well Cooper’s universe had aged. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the power dressing and puffball skirts; the preoccupation with social class; nobility sneering at the ostentatious newly wealthy, both ignoring everyone else while they complained about how lukewarm their sparkling wine was; the gender dynamics, with inappropriate behavior and misconduct so commonplace they were practically figures in their own right, a duo you could count on to drive the narrative forward.

While Cooper might have inhabited this period completely, she was never the proverbial fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s ubiquitous. She had a humanity and an keen insight that you could easily miss from her public persona. All her creations, from the canine to the horse to her family to her international student's relative, was always “utterly charming” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got harassed and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s surprising how acceptable it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the time.

Social Strata and Personality

She was affluent middle-class, which for all intents and purposes meant that her father had to hold down a job, but she’d have defined the strata more by their values. The middle classes fretted about every little detail, all the time – what society might think, mainly – and the elite didn’t give a … well “nonsense”. She was risqué, at times incredibly so, but her dialogue was never coarse.

She’d describe her family life in storybook prose: “Dad went to the war and Mom was deeply concerned”. They were both utterly beautiful, participating in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper mirrored in her own marriage, to a businessman of war books, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was 27, the marriage wasn’t without hiccups (he was a philanderer), but she was consistently comfortable giving people the formula for a successful union, which is noisy mattress but (key insight), they’re creaking with all the mirth. He didn't read her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel more ill. She took no offense, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be caught reading military history.

Always keep a journal – it’s very hard, when you’re mid-twenties, to recall what age 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 approached Cooper in reverse, having started in the main series, the early novels, alternatively called “the novels named after posh girls” – also Imogen and Harriet – were almost there, every protagonist feeling like a test-run for Rupert, every main character a little bit insipid. Plus, page for page (I haven’t actually run the numbers), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit conservative on matters of decorum, women always fretting that men would think they’re immoral, men saying ridiculous comments about why they favored virgins (in much the same way, ostensibly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the first to unseal a jar of coffee). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these books at a formative age. I believed for a while that that’s what affluent individuals actually believed.

They were, however, remarkably precisely constructed, high-functioning romances, which is considerably tougher than it seems. You felt Harriet’s surprise baby, Bella’s pissy family-by-marriage, Emily’s Scottish isolation – Cooper could guide you from an hopeless moment to a lottery win of the heart, and you could not once, even in the early days, put your finger on how she did it. At one moment you’d be chuckling at her meticulously detailed depictions of the bed linen, the following moment you’d have emotional response and uncertainty how they arrived.

Authorial Advice

Asked how to be a author, Cooper used to say the sort of advice that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been bothered to guide a beginner: utilize all all of your faculties, say how things scented and looked and audible and tactile and flavored – it really lifts the narrative. But perhaps more practical was: “Forever keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to remember what twenty-four felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you detect, in the longer, densely peopled books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just one lead, all with very upper-class names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an years apart of several years, between two sisters, between a male and a female, you can detect in the dialogue.

The Lost Manuscript

The backstory of Riders was so exactly typical of the author it might not have been true, except it absolutely is true because a London paper made a public request about it at the period: she finished the whole manuscript in 1970, long before the Romances, carried it into the downtown and misplaced it on a vehicle. Some context has been purposely excluded of this story – what, for example, was so important in the West End that you would abandon the sole version of your book on a train, which is not that far from forgetting your child on a railway? Surely an meeting, but which type?

Cooper was wont to exaggerate her own messiness and ineptitude