Utterly Exquisite! How Jilly Cooper Changed the Literary Landscape – One Steamy Bestseller at a Time

Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the age of 88, racked up sales of 11m books of her many epic books over her 50-year writing career. Adored by all discerning readers over a particular age (mid-forties), she was introduced to a younger audience last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Longtime readers would have wanted to see the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: starting with Riders, originally published in 1985, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, heartbreaker, rider, is debuts. But that’s a side note – what was notable about seeing Rivals as a box set was how brilliantly Cooper’s universe had stood the test of time. The chronicles distilled the eighties: the broad shoulders and bubble skirts; the preoccupation with social class; nobility disdaining the ostentatious newly wealthy, both dismissing everyone else while they quibbled about how warm their bubbly was; the intimate power struggles, with harassment and misconduct so everyday they were practically figures in their own right, a double act you could count on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have occupied this age totally, she was never the classic fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a empathy and an observational intelligence that you might not expect from listening to her speak. Every character, from the canine to the pony to her parents to her international student's relative, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got groped and further in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s remarkable how acceptable it is in many more highbrow books of the era.

Social Strata and Personality

She was upper-middle-class, which for practical purposes meant that her father had to hold down a job, but she’d have described the classes more by their customs. The middle classes anxiously contemplated about every little detail, all the time – what society might think, mainly – and the upper classes didn’t give a … well “such things”. She was spicy, at times very much, but her dialogue was never vulgar.

She’d narrate her childhood in idyllic language: “Father went to Dunkirk and Mother was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both utterly beautiful, involved in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper mirrored in her own marriage, to a businessman of war books, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was 27, the marriage wasn’t without hiccups (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was never less than comfortable giving people the secret for a successful union, which is noisy mattress but (crucial point), they’re squeaking with all the joy. He never read her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel more ill. She took no offense, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be caught reading military history.

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

Early Works

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance collection, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you came to Cooper backwards, having begun in her later universe, the initial books, also known as “those ones named after posh girls” – also Bella and Harriet – were almost there, every hero feeling like a prototype for Rupert, every female lead a little bit weak. Plus, chapter for chapter (I can't verify statistically), there was less sex in them. They were a bit reserved on issues of propriety, women always worrying that men would think they’re promiscuous, men saying outrageous statements about why they favored virgins (similarly, apparently, as a genuine guy always wants to be the first to break a tin of Nescafé). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these novels at a young age. I believed for a while that that’s what the upper class really thought.

They were, however, remarkably 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 transport you from an all-is-lost moment to a lottery win of the emotions, and you could never, even in the initial stages, pinpoint how she did it. One minute you’d be chuckling at her incredibly close accounts of the sheets, the following moment you’d have tears in your eyes and uncertainty how they got there.

Literary Guidance

Questioned how to be a writer, Cooper frequently advised the kind of thing that the famous author would have said, if he could have been arsed to assist a novice: employ all 5 of your perceptions, say how things aromatic and seemed and heard and touched and tasted – it really lifts the prose. But likely more helpful was: “Forever keep a notebook – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what twenty-four felt like.” That’s one of the first things you detect, in the more detailed, densely peopled books, which have 17 heroines rather than just one lead, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an years apart of four years, between two siblings, between a male and a female, you can hear in the dialogue.

A Literary Mystery

The backstory of Riders was so exactly Jilly Cooper it might not have been true, except it absolutely is factual because a London paper made a public request about it at the period: she completed the complete book in the early 70s, long before the Romances, brought it into the city center and forgot it on a vehicle. Some texture has been deliberately left out of this tale – what, for instance, was so important in the West End that you would abandon the sole version of your book on a public transport, which is not that different from forgetting your infant on a transport? Undoubtedly an meeting, but what sort?

Cooper was inclined to exaggerate her own chaos and clumsiness