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The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 88, achieved sales of 11m books of her assorted grand books over her five-decade career in writing. Cherished by all discerning readers over a particular age (45), she was introduced to a modern audience last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Cooper purists would have preferred to view the Rutshire chronicles in order: beginning with Riders, originally published in 1985, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, charmer, rider, is first introduced. But that’s a minor point – what was striking about viewing Rivals as a box set was how well Cooper’s world had aged. The chronicles distilled the eighties: the broad shoulders and bubble skirts; the preoccupation with social class; nobility looking down on the ostentatious newly wealthy, both ignoring everyone else while they snipped about how warm their bubbly was; the sexual politics, with harassment and assault so everyday they were practically characters in their own right, a double act you could count on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have lived in this era fully, she was never the typical fish not noticing the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a compassion and an observational intelligence that you could easily miss from hearing her talk. All her creations, from the pet to the equine to her mother and father to her international student's relative, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “completely exquisite”. People got groped and further in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s remarkable how OK it is in many far more literary books of the time.

Class and Character

She was affluent middle-class, which for all intents and purposes meant that her father had to earn an income, but she’d have described the strata more by their values. The bourgeoisie worried about all things, all the time – what society might think, primarily – and the upper classes didn’t give a … well “stuff”. She was raunchy, at times extremely, but her dialogue was never coarse.

She’d recount her childhood in idyllic language: “Father went to Dunkirk and Mummy was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both absolutely stunning, participating in a enduring romance, and this Cooper emulated in her own union, to a editor of war books, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was 27, the relationship wasn’t without hiccups (he was a unfaithful type), but she was always confident giving people the formula for a blissful partnership, which is creaking bed springs but (key insight), they’re creaking with all the laughter. He avoided reading her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had flu, and said it made him feel unwell. She wasn't bothered, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be caught reading military history.

Constantly keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re 25, to recall what age 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth book in the Romance series, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you came to Cooper from the later works, having begun in Rutshire, the early novels, also known as “the novels named after upper-class women” – also Bella and Harriet – were near misses, every male lead feeling like a trial version for Campbell-Black, every female lead a little bit insipid. Plus, page for page (Without exact data), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit uptight on issues of decorum, women always fretting that men would think they’re promiscuous, men saying ridiculous comments about why they liked virgins (in much the same way, apparently, as a true gentleman always wants to be the initial to open a tin of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these books at a impressionable age. I thought for a while that that was what the upper class really thought.

They were, however, remarkably tightly written, high-functioning romances, which is far more difficult than it appears. You experienced Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s difficult relatives, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – 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, put your finger on how she managed it. Suddenly you’d be chuckling at her highly specific descriptions of the sheets, the subsequently you’d have emotional response and no idea how they appeared.

Authorial Advice

Questioned how to be a writer, Cooper frequently advised the type of guidance that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been bothered to help out a beginner: utilize all 5 of your senses, say how things smelled and looked and heard and tactile and flavored – it significantly enhances the writing. But probably more useful was: “Always keep a notebook – it’s very challenging, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you observe, in the longer, densely peopled books, which have 17 heroines rather than just a single protagonist, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re American, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an years apart of several years, between two siblings, between a male and a woman, you can hear in the conversation.

The Lost Manuscript

The historical account of Riders was so perfectly Jilly Cooper it couldn't possibly have been true, except it certainly was true because London’s Evening Standard ran an appeal about it at the era: she wrote the entire draft in 1970, prior to the first books, took it into the downtown and forgot it on a bus. Some detail has been intentionally omitted of this anecdote – what, for case, was so significant in the urban area that you would abandon the only copy of your book on a bus, which is not that far from forgetting your child on a railway? Surely an meeting, but which type?

Cooper was prone to embellish her own disorder and clumsiness