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Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the 88 years of age, sold 11m volumes of her various grand books over her five-decade literary career. Cherished by anyone with any sense over a particular age (forty-five), she was brought to a modern audience last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Devoted fans would have wanted to watch the Rutshire chronicles in sequence: beginning with Riders, originally published in 1985, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, philanderer, rider, is first introduced. But that’s a side note – what was notable about viewing Rivals as a box set was how effectively Cooper’s universe had remained relevant. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the broad shoulders and puffball skirts; the obsession with class; the upper class looking down on the ostentatious newly wealthy, both ignoring everyone else while they complained about how lukewarm their champagne was; the intimate power struggles, with inappropriate behavior and misconduct so everyday they were virtually characters in their own right, a duo you could count on to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have occupied this age fully, she was never the classic fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s everywhere. 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 mother and father to her French exchange’s brother, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “completely exquisite”. People got groped and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s astonishing how OK it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the era.

Social Strata and Personality

She was well-to-do, which for practical purposes meant that her parent had to earn an income, but she’d have described the social classes more by their values. The middle classes anxiously contemplated about everything, all the time – what other people might think, mainly – and the upper classes didn’t bother with “such things”. She was spicy, at times very much, but her prose was always refined.

She’d recount her family life in idyllic language: “Dad went to battle and Mom was extremely anxious”. They were both utterly beautiful, engaged in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper replicated in her own partnership, to a editor of military histories, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was twenty-seven, the union wasn’t without hiccups (he was a philanderer), but she was never less than at ease giving people the recipe for a happy marriage, which is creaking bed springs but (big reveal), they’re squeaking with all the joy. He avoided reading her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel unwell. She wasn't bothered, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading military history.

Always keep a notebook – it’s very hard, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what being 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance novels, which started 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 upper-class women” – also Imogen and Harriet – were near misses, every protagonist feeling like a test-run for Campbell-Black, every heroine a little bit insipid. Plus, chapter for chapter (I can't verify statistically), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit uptight on matters of modesty, women always fretting that men would think they’re loose, men saying batshit things about why they favored virgins (comparably, ostensibly, as a real man always wants to be the initial to unseal a tin of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these books at a formative age. I thought for a while that that is what posh people genuinely felt.

They were, however, incredibly tightly written, high-functioning romances, which is considerably tougher than it sounds. You experienced Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s pissy relatives, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could take you from an all-is-lost moment to a windfall of the heart, and you could never, even in the initial stages, pinpoint how she did it. One minute you’d be smiling at her highly specific descriptions of the sheets, the next you’d have watery eyes and no idea how they got there.

Literary Guidance

Inquired how to be a author, Cooper frequently advised the type of guidance that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been arsed to help out a aspiring writer: utilize all 5 of your senses, say how things scented and appeared and sounded and touched and palatable – it greatly improves the prose. But perhaps more practical was: “Forever keep a journal – it’s very challenging, when you’re 25, to recollect what twenty-four felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you detect, in the longer, character-rich books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just one lead, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an years apart of a few years, between two siblings, between a male and a lady, you can hear in the dialogue.

A Literary Mystery

The backstory of Riders was so perfectly characteristically Cooper it might not have been real, except it absolutely is factual because a major newspaper published a notice about it at the period: she completed the complete book in the early 70s, prior to the early novels, carried it into the city center and misplaced it on a bus. Some texture has been purposely excluded of this anecdote – what, for instance, was so crucial in the urban area that you would abandon the sole version of your novel on a train, which is not that different from leaving your baby on a railway? Certainly an assignation, but which type?

Cooper was wont to exaggerate her own disorder and clumsiness