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The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the 88 years old, racked up sales of 11 million books of her assorted epic books over her half-century writing career. Adored by anyone with any sense over a specific age (mid-forties), she was presented to a younger audience last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Cooper purists would have wanted to view the Rutshire chronicles in sequence: starting with Riders, initially released in the mid-80s, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, philanderer, horse rider, is first introduced. But that’s a minor point – what was striking about seeing Rivals as a binge-watch was how effectively Cooper’s fictional realm had remained relevant. The chronicles distilled the 1980s: the broad shoulders and puffball skirts; the preoccupation with social class; aristocrats disdaining the Technicolored nouveau riche, both overlooking everyone else while they complained about how lukewarm their bubbly was; the intimate power struggles, with unwanted advances and abuse so everyday they were almost personas in their own right, a duo you could rely on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have occupied this age totally, she was never the proverbial fish not noticing the ocean because it’s all around. She had a humanity and an observational intelligence that you might not expect from her public persona. Every character, from the canine to the equine to her parents to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got assaulted and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s astonishing how acceptable it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the time.

Social Strata and Personality

She was upper-middle-class, which for all intents and purposes meant that her father had to hold down a job, but she’d have defined the social classes more by their values. The middle classes worried about everything, all the time – what others might think, mostly – and the elite didn’t care a … well “such things”. She was risqué, at times incredibly so, but her prose was never vulgar.

She’d describe her upbringing in fairytale terms: “Father went to Dunkirk and Mother was deeply concerned”. They were both absolutely stunning, involved in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper emulated in her own partnership, to a editor of war books, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was twenty-seven, the relationship wasn’t without hiccups (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was never less than confident giving people the formula for a blissful partnership, which is creaking bed springs but (crucial point), they’re squeaking with all the laughter. He didn't read her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel more ill. She wasn't bothered, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be spotted reading war chronicles.

Always keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re 25, to recollect what twenty-four felt like

Early Works

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance series, which commenced with Emily in the mid-70s. If you came to Cooper in reverse, having commenced in Rutshire, the initial books, alternatively called “those ones named after posh girls” – also Octavia and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every protagonist feeling like a test-run for Campbell-Black, every main character a little bit insipid. Plus, line for line (I can't verify statistically), there was less sex in them. They were a bit conservative on topics of modesty, women always fretting that men would think they’re immoral, men saying outrageous statements about why they preferred virgins (comparably, ostensibly, as a genuine guy always wants to be the first to open a jar of coffee). I don’t know if I’d suggest reading these novels at a impressionable age. I assumed for a while that that is what posh people actually believed.

They were, however, remarkably well-crafted, effective romances, which is far more difficult than it seems. You felt Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s annoying relatives, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an hopeless moment to a windfall of the emotions, and you could not once, even in the beginning, pinpoint how she achieved it. At one moment you’d be laughing at her incredibly close depictions of the bed linen, the following moment you’d have tears in your eyes and uncertainty how they got there.

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 guide a novice: use all five of your senses, say how things scented and appeared and audible and felt and flavored – it greatly improves the writing. But probably more useful was: “Always keep a journal – it’s very challenging, when you’re mid-twenties, to remember what twenty-four felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you observe, in the longer, character-rich books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just a single protagonist, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an age difference of four years, between two sisters, between a gentleman and a lady, you can perceive in the speech.

An Author's Tale

The origin story of Riders was so perfectly typical of the author it couldn't possibly have been true, except it certainly was real because a London paper ran an appeal about it at the era: she wrote the complete book in 1970, long before the early novels, brought it into the city center and forgot it on a vehicle. Some texture has been purposely excluded of this tale – what, for instance, was so crucial in the city that you would forget the only copy of your book on a public transport, which is not that far from forgetting your child on a railway? Undoubtedly an rendezvous, but which type?

Cooper was prone to amp up her own disorder and ineptitude