Utterly Heavenly! The Way Jilly Cooper Revolutionized the World – A Single Bonkbuster at a Time

The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 88, sold 11 million books of her assorted sweeping books over her 50-year writing career. Beloved by all discerning readers over a specific age (mid-forties), she was presented to a modern audience last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Cooper purists would have wanted to watch the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: starting with Riders, first published in 1985, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, charmer, rider, is debuts. But that’s a minor point – what was striking about viewing Rivals as a complete series was how brilliantly Cooper’s universe had stood the test of time. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the broad shoulders and bubble skirts; the obsession with class; nobility looking down on the Technicolored nouveau riche, both ignoring everyone else while they complained about how lukewarm their sparkling wine was; the sexual politics, with unwanted advances and assault so everyday they were almost personas in their own right, a double act you could rely on to drive the narrative forward.

While Cooper might have inhabited this era completely, she was never the proverbial fish not noticing the ocean because it’s ubiquitous. She had a humanity and an perceptive wisdom that you might not expect from her public persona. Everyone, from the canine to the horse to her mother and father to her international student's relative, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “completely exquisite”. People got harassed and further in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s surprising how tolerated it is in many far more literary books of the era.

Social Strata and Personality

She was well-to-do, which for all intents and purposes meant that her dad had to earn an income, but she’d have described the strata more by their mores. The middle classes anxiously contemplated about every little detail, all the time – what others might think, mainly – and the elite didn’t bother with “stuff”. She was raunchy, at times incredibly so, but her prose was never coarse.

She’d narrate her upbringing in idyllic language: “Father went to Dunkirk and Mother was deeply concerned”. They were both utterly beautiful, engaged in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper emulated in her own union, to a publisher of historical accounts, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was 27, the relationship wasn’t without hiccups (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was consistently at ease giving people the formula for a happy marriage, which is squeaky bed but (crucial point), they’re noisy with all the laughter. He avoided reading her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel unwell. She wasn't bothered, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading battle accounts.

Always keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re 25, to remember what being 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (the late 70s) was the fifth volume in the Romance novels, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you discovered Cooper from the later works, having started in her later universe, the initial books, AKA “those ones named after upper-class women” – also Imogen and Harriet – were almost there, every protagonist feeling like a prototype for the iconic character, every main character a little bit weak. Plus, chapter for chapter (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 loose, men saying ridiculous comments about why they liked virgins (similarly, ostensibly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the first to unseal a tin of coffee). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these books at a formative age. I thought for a while that that’s what posh people really thought.

They were, however, remarkably tightly written, high-functioning romances, which is much harder than it seems. You experienced Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s difficult relatives, Emily’s Scottish isolation – Cooper could transport you from an all-is-lost moment to a windfall of the emotions, and you could not ever, even in the beginning, pinpoint how she managed it. Suddenly you’d be smiling at her incredibly close accounts of the bedding, the subsequently you’d have tears in your eyes and little understanding how they arrived.

Authorial Advice

Inquired how to be a writer, Cooper frequently advised the kind of thing that the famous author would have said, if he could have been inclined to guide a aspiring writer: utilize all five of your faculties, say how things smelled and appeared and heard and tactile and palatable – it greatly improves the narrative. But perhaps more practical was: “Always keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re mid-twenties, to recall what twenty-four felt like.” That’s one of the first things you observe, in the more extensive, more populated books, which have numerous female leads rather than just a single protagonist, all with very upper-class names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an age difference of a few years, between two sisters, between a male and a lady, you can hear in the conversation.

The Lost Manuscript

The backstory of Riders was so pitch-perfectly typical of the author it can’t possibly have been accurate, except it definitely is real because a major newspaper published a notice about it at the period: she wrote the whole manuscript in 1970, well before the early novels, took it into the city center and forgot it on a public transport. Some texture has been purposely excluded of this tale – what, for instance, was so significant in the urban area that you would forget the sole version of your manuscript on a train, which is not that different from abandoning your baby on a transport? Undoubtedly an rendezvous, but what kind?

Cooper was wont to embellish her own messiness and haplessness