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The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the age of 88, achieved sales of 11m copies of her various epic books over her five-decade literary career. Adored by all discerning readers over a particular age (mid-forties), she was brought to a new generation last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Devoted fans would have preferred to view the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: starting with Riders, initially released in the mid-80s, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, charmer, equestrian, is debuts. But that’s a side note – what was notable about watching Rivals as a complete series was how well Cooper’s fictional realm had stood the test of time. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the broad shoulders and puffball skirts; the preoccupation with social class; aristocrats disdaining the flashy new money, both ignoring everyone else while they snipped about how warm their bubbly was; the gender dynamics, with inappropriate behavior and abuse so everyday they were almost characters in their own right, a pair you could count on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have lived in this era completely, she was never the proverbial fish not noticing the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a humanity and an keen insight that you maybe wouldn’t guess from listening to her speak. Every character, from the pet to the horse to her mother and father to her French exchange’s brother, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got harassed and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s remarkable how tolerated it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the time.

Class and Character

She was affluent middle-class, which for real-world terms meant that her dad had to hold down a job, but she’d have characterized the strata more by their mores. The middle classes fretted about all things, all the time – what other people might think, mainly – and the elite didn’t give a … well “such things”. She was raunchy, at times very much, but her prose was always refined.

She’d recount her upbringing in idyllic language: “Dad went to the war and Mother was extremely anxious”. They were both absolutely stunning, involved in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper emulated in her own marriage, to a publisher of military histories, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was twenty-seven, the union wasn’t perfect (he was a unfaithful type), but she was always at ease giving people the secret for a happy marriage, which is noisy mattress but (crucial point), they’re squeaking with all the mirth. He never read her books – he read Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel unwell. She took no offense, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be caught reading military history.

Forever keep a journal – it’s very challenging, when you’re mid-twenties, to remember what being 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (the late 70s) was the fifth book in the Romance novels, which began with Emily in 1975. If you approached Cooper in reverse, having commenced in Rutshire, the Romances, also known as “the novels named after affluent ladies” – also Bella and Harriet – were almost there, every male lead feeling like a trial version for Campbell-Black, every main character a little bit drippy. Plus, page for page (Without exact data), there was less sex in them. They were a bit uptight on matters of propriety, women always fretting that men would think they’re loose, men saying batshit things about why they preferred virgins (in much the same way, seemingly, as a genuine guy always wants to be the primary to open a container of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d suggest reading these books at a impressionable age. I believed for a while that that’s what the upper class genuinely felt.

They were, however, incredibly well-crafted, successful romances, which is much harder than it seems. You experienced Harriet’s surprise baby, Bella’s pissy family-by-marriage, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could take you from an hopeless moment to a jackpot of the emotions, and you could not ever, even in the initial stages, identify how she managed it. At one moment you’d be smiling at her meticulously detailed accounts of the sheets, the next you’d have watery eyes and little understanding how they appeared.

Authorial Advice

Asked how to be a author, Cooper frequently advised the kind of thing that Ernest Hemingway would have said, if he could have been inclined to assist a novice: use all five of your senses, say how things aromatic and looked and sounded and touched and palatable – it significantly enhances the writing. But likely more helpful was: “Forever keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to recall what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the first things you detect, in the more detailed, character-rich books, which have numerous female leads rather than just a single protagonist, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a simple moniker. Even an age difference of several years, between two siblings, between a gentleman and a woman, you can detect in the speech.

An Author's Tale

The backstory of Riders was so pitch-perfectly Jilly Cooper it couldn't possibly have been true, except it certainly was real because a London paper made a public request about it at the time: she wrote the whole manuscript in the early 70s, well before the early novels, brought it into the city center and left it on a bus. Some detail has been deliberately left out of this story – what, for example, was so significant in the city that you would abandon the sole version of your book on a public transport, which is not that far from leaving your child on a railway? Certainly an assignation, but which type?

Cooper was wont to embellish her own disorder and haplessness