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The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 88, sold eleven million books of her various grand books over her 50-year career in writing. Beloved by all discerning readers over a specific age (forty-five), she was presented to a new generation last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Devoted fans would have wanted to watch the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: starting with Riders, first published in 1985, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, charmer, horse rider, is first introduced. But that’s a side note – what was remarkable about seeing Rivals as a binge-watch was how effectively Cooper’s universe had remained relevant. The chronicles captured the eighties: the broad shoulders and bubble skirts; the fixation on status; the upper class disdaining the flashy new money, both ignoring everyone else while they snipped about how lukewarm their champagne was; the intimate power struggles, with inappropriate behavior and abuse so routine they were virtually figures in their own right, a pair you could count on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have occupied this age completely, she was never the classic 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. All her creations, from the canine to the horse to her family to her international student's relative, was always “utterly charming” – 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 OK it is in many far more literary books of the time.

Social Strata and Personality

She was affluent middle-class, which for real-world terms meant that her parent had to hold down a job, but she’d have characterized the strata more by their mores. The middle-class people fretted about every little detail, all the time – what other people might think, primarily – and the upper classes didn’t bother with “stuff”. She was risqué, at times very much, but her dialogue was always refined.

She’d describe her family life in fairytale terms: “Daddy went to the war and Mom was extremely anxious”. They were both absolutely stunning, involved in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper mirrored in her own union, to a editor of war books, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was in his late twenties, the union wasn’t without hiccups (he was a philanderer), but she was consistently confident giving people the formula for a happy marriage, which is creaking bed springs but (crucial point), they’re noisy with all the mirth. He avoided reading 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 returned: she wouldn’t be caught reading war chronicles.

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

Initial Novels

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance novels, which began with Emily in 1975. If you approached Cooper from the later works, having started in Rutshire, the early novels, also known as “the books named after upper-class women” – also Bella and Harriet – were almost there, every male lead feeling like a prototype for Rupert, every heroine a little bit drippy. Plus, line for line (I can't verify statistically), there was less sex in them. They were a bit reserved on topics of propriety, women always being anxious that men would think they’re loose, men saying ridiculous comments about why they liked virgins (similarly, ostensibly, as a real man always wants to be the initial to break a tin of coffee). I don’t know if I’d suggest reading these books at a young age. I assumed for a while that that’s what affluent individuals genuinely felt.

They were, however, incredibly well-crafted, successful romances, which is far more difficult than it seems. You lived Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s difficult in-laws, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could transport you from an desperate moment to a windfall of the emotions, and you could not ever, even in the initial stages, put your finger on how she achieved it. At one moment you’d be laughing at her incredibly close accounts of the sheets, the following moment you’d have tears in your eyes and uncertainty how they arrived.

Writing Wisdom

Inquired how to be a author, Cooper frequently advised the sort of advice that Ernest Hemingway would have said, if he could have been bothered to help out a beginner: use all five of your faculties, say how things smelled and appeared and heard and touched and tasted – it really lifts the writing. But probably more useful was: “Constantly keep a journal – it’s very hard, when you’re 25, to recollect what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you detect, in the more extensive, densely peopled books, which have 17 heroines rather than just a single protagonist, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re American, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an age difference of several years, between two relatives, between a man and a lady, you can detect in the dialogue.

An Author's Tale

The backstory of Riders was so exactly Jilly Cooper it might not have been true, except it absolutely is real because a London paper published a notice about it at the period: she completed the entire draft in the early 70s, well before the first books, brought it into the city center and forgot it on a vehicle. Some context has been intentionally omitted of this tale – what, for example, was so crucial in the West End that you would forget the sole version of your manuscript on a bus, which is not that unlike leaving your baby on a transport? Surely an assignation, but what kind?

Cooper was inclined to embellish her own chaos and clumsiness