Utterly Exquisite! How Jilly Cooper Changed the Literary Landscape – One Racy Novel at a Time

The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the age of 88, racked up sales of eleven million books of her various grand books over her half-century career in writing. Beloved by anyone with any sense over a certain age (forty-five), she was presented to a new generation last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Longtime readers would have preferred to see the Rutshire chronicles in order: starting with Riders, originally published in the mid-80s, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, philanderer, rider, is initially presented. But that’s a side note – what was remarkable about viewing Rivals as a box set was how well Cooper’s world had aged. The chronicles encapsulated the eighties: the power dressing and voluminous skirts; the obsession with class; nobility sneering at the flashy new money, both dismissing everyone else while they quibbled about how warm their champagne was; the sexual politics, with harassment and misconduct so routine they were virtually characters in their own right, a duo you could rely on to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have occupied this age fully, she was never the typical fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a compassion and an keen insight that you could easily miss from listening to her speak. Every character, from the dog to the pony to her parents to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “absolutely divine”. People got harassed and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s remarkable how acceptable it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the era.

Social Strata and Personality

She was affluent middle-class, which for practical purposes meant that her dad had to hold down a job, but she’d have defined the social classes more by their customs. The middle-class people worried about every little detail, all the time – what society might think, mostly – and the upper classes didn’t bother with “nonsense”. She was raunchy, at times very much, but her language was never vulgar.

She’d describe her childhood in idyllic language: “Dad went to Dunkirk and Mother was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both absolutely stunning, participating in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper emulated in her own marriage, to a businessman of military histories, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was in his late twenties, the relationship wasn’t perfect (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was never less than confident giving people the secret for a successful union, which is squeaky bed but (big reveal), they’re noisy with all the laughter. He never read her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel unwell. She didn’t mind, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be spotted reading battle accounts.

Always keep a notebook – it’s very difficult, when you’re 25, to remember 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 discovered Cooper from the later works, having commenced in the main series, the early novels, alternatively called “those ones named after posh girls” – also Bella and Harriet – were almost there, every protagonist feeling like a test-run for the iconic character, every heroine a little bit insipid. Plus, line for line (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 batshit things about why they preferred virgins (similarly, ostensibly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the primary to open a container of coffee). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these novels at a impressionable age. I assumed for a while that that was what affluent individuals really thought.

They were, however, remarkably precisely constructed, effective romances, which is much harder than it seems. You experienced Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s difficult in-laws, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could guide you from an desperate moment to a jackpot of the soul, and you could never, even in the beginning, pinpoint how she managed it. Suddenly you’d be laughing at her highly specific descriptions of the sheets, the following moment you’d have tears in your eyes and uncertainty how they arrived.

Literary Guidance

Questioned how to be a author, Cooper would often state the sort of advice that the famous author would have said, if he could have been bothered to help out a novice: use all five of your perceptions, say how things aromatic and seemed and audible and touched and tasted – it really lifts the writing. But probably more useful was: “Constantly keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re mid-twenties, to recollect what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the first things you detect, in the more detailed, more populated books, which have 17 heroines rather than just a single protagonist, all with very upper-class names, unless they’re American, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an years apart of four years, between two sisters, between a man and a lady, you can detect in the dialogue.

The Lost Manuscript

The origin story of Riders was so perfectly typical of the author it might not have been true, except it definitely is real because a London paper published a notice about it at the era: she completed the entire draft in 1970, well before the first books, brought it into the downtown and misplaced it on a public transport. Some detail has been deliberately left out of this story – what, for case, was so significant in the city that you would leave the unique draft of your book on a public transport, which is not that unlike leaving your child on a railway? Surely an rendezvous, but what sort?

Cooper was wont to exaggerate her own messiness and ineptitude