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Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the age of 88, sold eleven million books of her assorted grand books over her 50-year literary career. Cherished by all discerning readers over a particular age (mid-forties), she was introduced to a new generation last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Devoted fans would have wanted to watch the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: beginning with Riders, first published in the mid-80s, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, charmer, rider, is initially presented. But that’s a minor point – what was notable about watching Rivals as a binge-watch was how well Cooper’s universe had stood the test of time. The chronicles distilled the eighties: the power dressing and puffball skirts; the preoccupation with social class; the upper class disdaining the flashy new money, both overlooking everyone else while they quibbled about how warm their bubbly was; the intimate power struggles, with inappropriate behavior and assault so routine they were virtually figures in their own right, a double act you could count on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have inhabited this period completely, she was never the typical fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s ubiquitous. She had a humanity and an perceptive wisdom that you could easily miss from listening to her speak. Every character, from the pet to the equine to her parents to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got assaulted and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s surprising how OK it is in many far more literary books of the period.

Social Strata and Personality

She was upper-middle-class, which for practical purposes meant that her father had to earn an income, but she’d have described the strata more by their values. The middle-class people worried about every little detail, all the time – what other people might think, primarily – and the aristocracy didn’t bother with “stuff”. She was risqué, at times incredibly so, but her dialogue was never vulgar.

She’d narrate her childhood in storybook prose: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mother was extremely anxious”. They were both utterly beautiful, engaged in a enduring romance, and this Cooper mirrored in her own marriage, to a businessman of historical accounts, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was 27, the marriage wasn’t smooth sailing (he was a unfaithful type), but she was always confident giving people the formula for a successful union, which is creaking bed springs but (key insight), they’re creaking with all the joy. He avoided reading her books – he read Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel more ill. She didn’t mind, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading military history.

Constantly keep a journal – it’s very hard, when you’re 25, to recollect what twenty-four felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (the late 70s) was the fifth book in the Romance collection, which began with Emily in the mid-70s. If you came to Cooper backwards, having begun in the main series, the Romances, alternatively called “the novels named after posh girls” – also Octavia and Harriet – were near misses, every hero feeling like a trial version for Rupert, every female lead a little bit drippy. Plus, chapter for chapter (I can't verify statistically), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit reserved on issues of propriety, women always fretting that men would think they’re loose, men saying ridiculous comments about why they favored virgins (similarly, seemingly, as a real man always wants to be the first to open a jar of Nescafé). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these stories at a formative age. I believed for a while that that is what posh people really thought.

They were, however, incredibly well-crafted, high-functioning romances, which is much harder than it seems. You felt Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s difficult in-laws, Emily’s Scottish isolation – Cooper could guide you from an all-is-lost moment to a windfall of the soul, and you could not once, even in the early days, put your finger on how she did it. One minute you’d be smiling at her meticulously detailed accounts of the bed linen, the subsequently you’d have watery eyes and uncertainty how they arrived.

Literary Guidance

Asked how to be a author, Cooper used to say the sort of advice that Ernest Hemingway would have said, if he could have been inclined to assist a beginner: employ all 5 of your perceptions, say how things aromatic and appeared and sounded and touched and flavored – it really lifts the writing. But probably more useful was: “Always keep a journal – it’s very hard, when you’re 25, to recollect what twenty-four felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you notice, in the longer, character-rich 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 Helen. Even an age difference of four years, between two sisters, between a gentleman and a female, you can perceive in the conversation.

An Author's Tale

The origin story of Riders was so perfectly Jilly Cooper it might not have been true, except it definitely is true because a London paper published a notice about it at the time: she wrote the whole manuscript in the early 70s, well before the early novels, took it into the West End and forgot it on a vehicle. Some texture has been deliberately left out of this tale – what, for case, was so significant in the city that you would leave the only copy of your novel on a train, which is not that unlike leaving your baby on a transport? Certainly an meeting, but what sort?

Cooper was inclined to embellish her own chaos and haplessness