Truly Exquisite! The Way Jilly Cooper Changed the World – A Single Racy Novel at a Time

The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the 88 years of age, achieved sales of 11m copies of her various grand books over her 50-year literary career. Cherished by anyone with any sense over a particular age (forty-five), she was brought to a new generation last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Cooper purists would have wanted to watch the Rutshire chronicles in order: starting with Riders, originally published in 1985, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, philanderer, rider, is debuts. But that’s a side note – what was striking about viewing Rivals as a box set was how brilliantly Cooper’s fictional realm had aged. The chronicles captured the eighties: the shoulder pads and puffball skirts; the preoccupation with social class; nobility looking down on the flashy new money, both dismissing everyone else while they quibbled about how lukewarm their champagne was; the gender dynamics, with harassment and assault so everyday they were virtually characters in their own right, a duo you could trust to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have occupied this age fully, she was never the typical fish not noticing the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a compassion and an perceptive wisdom that you might not expect from her public persona. Every character, from the pet to the pony to her mother and father to her French exchange’s brother, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “completely exquisite”. People got assaulted and further in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s astonishing how acceptable it is in many more highbrow books of the period.

Class and Character

She was well-to-do, which for real-world terms meant that her parent had to work for a living, but she’d have described the strata more by their customs. The middle classes fretted about every little detail, all the time – what other people might think, mainly – and the elite didn’t give a … well “stuff”. She was raunchy, at times very much, but her prose was never vulgar.

She’d describe her upbringing in storybook prose: “Dad went to battle and Mom was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both completely gorgeous, participating in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper mirrored in her own partnership, to a businessman of war books, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was in his late twenties, the marriage wasn’t without hiccups (he was a unfaithful type), but she was never less than at ease giving people the recipe for a blissful partnership, which is squeaky bed but (big reveal), they’re noisy with all the joy. He never read her books – he read Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel more ill. She wasn't bothered, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be spotted reading battle accounts.

Always keep a notebook – it’s very challenging, when you’re twenty-five, to recall what being 24 felt like

Initial Novels

Prudence (1978) was the fifth book in the Romance collection, which commenced with Emily in the mid-70s. If you discovered Cooper from the later works, having begun in her later universe, the Romances, alternatively called “the books named after upper-class women” – also Imogen and Harriet – were almost there, every protagonist feeling like a trial version for Rupert, every heroine a little bit weak. Plus, page for page (I can't verify statistically), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit uptight on issues of decorum, women always being anxious that men would think they’re promiscuous, men saying outrageous statements about why they favored virgins (in much the same way, seemingly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the primary to break a tin of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these books at a formative age. I believed for a while that that is what the upper class genuinely felt.

They were, however, remarkably well-crafted, high-functioning romances, which is far more difficult than it sounds. You experienced Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s pissy relatives, Emily’s Scottish isolation – Cooper could transport you from an hopeless moment to a windfall of the emotions, and you could not once, even in the initial stages, identify how she achieved it. At one moment you’d be laughing at her highly specific descriptions of the bedding, the following moment you’d have watery eyes and little understanding how they got there.

Writing Wisdom

Questioned how to be a novelist, Cooper would often state the kind of thing that the famous author would have said, if he could have been bothered to assist a beginner: use all 5 of your perceptions, say how things scented and seemed and sounded and felt and flavored – it significantly enhances the prose. But likely more helpful was: “Forever keep a notebook – it’s very challenging, when you’re 25, to recollect what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you notice, in the longer, densely peopled books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just one lead, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re Stateside, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an years apart of a few years, between two siblings, between a man and a female, you can perceive in the dialogue.

The Lost Manuscript

The origin story of Riders was so perfectly typical of the author it couldn't possibly have been accurate, except it definitely is true because a major newspaper ran an appeal about it at the era: she wrote the complete book in 1970, long before the first books, brought it into the downtown and forgot it on a public transport. Some detail has been purposely excluded of this story – what, for case, was so important in the West End that you would leave the sole version of your manuscript on a public transport, which is not that far from abandoning your child on a railway? Undoubtedly an assignation, but what sort?

Cooper was inclined to amp up her own disorder and clumsiness