Truly Exquisite! The Way Jilly Cooper Changed the Literary Landscape – One Racy Novel at a Time

Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 88, sold 11 million volumes of her many epic books over her half-century career in writing. Cherished by all discerning readers over a specific age (forty-five), she was introduced to a modern audience last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Longtime readers would have preferred to watch the Rutshire chronicles in sequence: starting with Riders, originally published in 1985, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, scoundrel, heartbreaker, horse rider, is first introduced. But that’s a sidebar – what was remarkable about viewing Rivals as a binge-watch was how well Cooper’s universe had stood the test of time. The chronicles encapsulated the 1980s: the broad shoulders and bubble skirts; the obsession with class; nobility sneering at the flashy new money, both ignoring everyone else while they snipped about how lukewarm their champagne was; the intimate power struggles, with harassment and misconduct so everyday they were virtually personas in their own right, a double act you could trust to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have inhabited this period fully, she was never the proverbial fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s all around. She had a empathy and an perceptive wisdom that you might not expect from her public persona. Every character, from the pet to the pony to her parents to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “completely delightful” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got groped and further in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s surprising how acceptable it is in many far more literary books of the time.

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 characterized the classes more by their mores. The middle classes fretted about everything, all the time – what society might think, mostly – and the upper classes didn’t bother with “stuff”. She was raunchy, at times very much, but her dialogue was always refined.

She’d describe her family life in storybook prose: “Dad went to the war and Mother was deeply concerned”. They were both utterly beautiful, involved in a enduring romance, and this Cooper mirrored in her own union, to a publisher of war books, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was in his late twenties, the marriage wasn’t perfect (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was always at ease giving people the secret for a blissful partnership, which is squeaky bed but (key insight), they’re noisy with all the laughter. He avoided reading her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had flu, and said it made him feel unwell. She took no offense, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be spotted reading military history.

Constantly keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to remember what twenty-four felt like

Initial Novels

Prudence (the late 70s) was the fifth volume in the Romance collection, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you approached Cooper from the later works, having commenced in her later universe, the Romances, AKA “those ones named after upper-class women” – also Bella and Harriet – were almost there, every male lead feeling like a trial version for the iconic character, every female lead a little bit weak. Plus, line for line (Without exact data), there was less sex in them. They were a bit reserved on matters of modesty, women always worrying that men would think they’re loose, men saying ridiculous comments about why they favored virgins (comparably, ostensibly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the first to open a tin of coffee). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these books at a formative age. I believed for a while that that’s what the upper class really thought.

They were, however, incredibly tightly written, high-functioning romances, which is much harder than it seems. You lived Harriet’s surprise baby, Bella’s difficult in-laws, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an all-is-lost moment to a jackpot of the heart, and you could not ever, even in the beginning, identify how she did it. Suddenly you’d be smiling at her incredibly close depictions of the bedding, the next you’d have watery eyes and uncertainty how they got there.

Authorial Advice

Asked how to be a writer, Cooper used to say the sort of advice that the famous author would have said, if he could have been inclined to guide a aspiring writer: employ all all of your faculties, say how things smelled and appeared and heard and felt and palatable – it significantly enhances the writing. But perhaps more practical was: “Forever keep a notebook – it’s very challenging, when you’re 25, to recollect what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you notice, in the more extensive, character-rich books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just one, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a simple moniker. Even an generational gap of four years, between two relatives, between a man and a female, you can hear in the speech.

A Literary Mystery

The origin story of Riders was so exactly Jilly Cooper it couldn't possibly have been real, except it absolutely is real because a London paper published a notice about it at the era: she completed the entire draft in the early 70s, prior to the Romances, brought it into the downtown and forgot it on a vehicle. Some detail has been intentionally omitted of this story – what, for instance, was so crucial in the West End that you would forget the unique draft of your novel on a public transport, which is not that different from leaving your infant on a train? Surely an assignation, but what kind?

Cooper was inclined to amp up her own messiness and ineptitude