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Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the 88 years of age, achieved sales of 11m volumes of her many epic books over her half-century writing career. Adored by anyone with any sense over a particular age (45), she was brought to a new generation last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Longtime readers would have preferred to watch the Rutshire chronicles in sequence: commencing with Riders, first published in 1985, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, charmer, horse rider, is first introduced. But that’s a minor point – what was remarkable about viewing Rivals as a box set was how effectively Cooper’s universe had stood the test of time. The chronicles encapsulated the 1980s: the broad shoulders and puffball skirts; the obsession with class; the upper class sneering at the ostentatious newly wealthy, both ignoring everyone else while they complained about how lukewarm their champagne was; the intimate power struggles, with harassment and abuse so everyday they were almost figures in their own right, a double act you could trust to drive the narrative forward.

While Cooper might have lived in this period completely, she was never the typical fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s all around. She had a humanity and an perceptive wisdom that you might not expect from her public persona. Everyone, from the pet to the equine to her family to her international student's relative, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got harassed and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s surprising how tolerated it is in many far more literary books of the period.

Class and Character

She was upper-middle-class, which for all intents and purposes meant that her dad had to hold down a job, but she’d have described the classes more by their customs. The middle-class people worried about everything, all the time – what society might think, mainly – and the elite didn’t care a … well “stuff”. She was spicy, at times incredibly so, but her prose was never vulgar.

She’d recount her childhood in idyllic language: “Daddy went to battle and Mummy was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both absolutely stunning, participating in a enduring romance, and this Cooper mirrored in her own partnership, to a editor of military histories, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was twenty-seven, the marriage wasn’t smooth sailing (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was consistently comfortable giving people the secret for a blissful partnership, which is squeaky bed but (key insight), they’re squeaking with all the laughter. He avoided reading her books – he read Prudence once, when he had flu, and said it made him feel worse. She took no offense, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading battle accounts.

Forever keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to recall what being 24 felt like

Early Works

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance collection, which started with Emily in the mid-70s. If you approached Cooper from the later works, having begun in the main series, the initial books, AKA “those ones named after affluent ladies” – also Bella and Harriet – were near misses, every protagonist feeling like a test-run for the iconic character, 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 uptight on matters of decorum, women always worrying that men would think they’re promiscuous, men saying ridiculous comments about why they preferred virgins (similarly, seemingly, as a real man always wants to be the initial to open a jar of coffee). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these novels at a impressionable age. I thought for a while that that was what the upper class really thought.

They were, however, incredibly precisely constructed, effective romances, which is far more difficult than it sounds. You felt Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s annoying relatives, Emily’s Scottish isolation – Cooper could take you from an hopeless moment to a jackpot of the heart, and you could never, even in the beginning, put your finger on how she managed it. Suddenly you’d be chuckling at her highly specific accounts of the sheets, the next you’d have watery eyes and no idea how they arrived.

Literary Guidance

Inquired how to be a author, Cooper used to say the kind of thing that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been bothered to guide a novice: employ all all of your senses, say how things smelled and appeared and heard and felt and flavored – it really lifts the writing. But probably more useful was: “Forever keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re 25, to remember what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you notice, in the more detailed, character-rich books, which have numerous female leads rather than just one lead, all with very upper-class names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an years apart of a few years, between two relatives, between a male and a female, you can hear in the speech.

A Literary Mystery

The historical account of Riders was so pitch-perfectly characteristically Cooper it couldn't possibly have been true, except it definitely is real because London’s Evening Standard ran an appeal about it at the time: she finished the complete book in 1970, long before the early novels, took it into the West End and left it on a bus. Some texture has been purposely excluded of this story – what, for instance, was so significant in the West End that you would leave the unique draft of your manuscript on a bus, which is not that far from abandoning your infant on a transport? Certainly an meeting, but which type?

Cooper was inclined to exaggerate her own messiness and haplessness