Absolutely Heavenly! The Way Jilly Cooper Transformed the Literary Landscape – One Steamy Bestseller at a Time

Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the 88 years of age, achieved sales of eleven million copies of her many epic books over her five-decade literary career. Adored by every sensible person over a specific age (45), she was brought to a new generation last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Cooper purists would have wanted to watch the Rutshire chronicles in order: commencing with Riders, first published in 1985, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, philanderer, equestrian, is debuts. But that’s a minor point – what was striking about seeing Rivals as a complete series was how well Cooper’s fictional realm had remained relevant. The chronicles encapsulated the 1980s: the power dressing and bubble skirts; the preoccupation with social class; aristocrats looking down on the Technicolored nouveau riche, both dismissing everyone else while they quibbled about how room-temperature their sparkling wine was; the intimate power struggles, with unwanted advances and assault so everyday they were practically characters in their own right, a duo you could count on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have occupied this age fully, she was never the typical fish not noticing the ocean because it’s all around. She had a humanity and an keen insight that you maybe wouldn’t guess from hearing her talk. Every character, from the pet to the equine to her family to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “completely exquisite”. People got groped and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s astonishing how OK it is in many more highbrow books of the period.

Background and Behavior

She was well-to-do, which for practical purposes meant that her father had to work for a living, but she’d have described the strata more by their mores. The middle classes anxiously contemplated about all things, all the time – what other people might think, mostly – and the aristocracy didn’t give a … well “such things”. She was raunchy, at times extremely, but her dialogue was always refined.

She’d recount her family life in fairytale terms: “Daddy went to Dunkirk and Mom was extremely anxious”. They were both completely gorgeous, involved in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper emulated in her own marriage, to a publisher of military histories, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was 27, the union wasn’t perfect (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was never less than confident giving people the formula for a successful union, which is squeaky bed but (big reveal), they’re squeaking with all the mirth. He never read her books – he read Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel unwell. She wasn't bothered, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be spotted reading war chronicles.

Constantly keep a notebook – it’s very difficult, when you’re twenty-five, to remember what being 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance collection, which started with Emily in 1975. If you discovered Cooper from the later works, having started in the main series, the initial books, AKA “those ones named after affluent ladies” – also Octavia and Harriet – were almost there, every protagonist feeling like a prototype for Rupert, every main character a little bit insipid. Plus, page for page (I can't verify statistically), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit conservative on topics of modesty, women always being anxious that men would think they’re immoral, men saying ridiculous comments about why they preferred virgins (similarly, seemingly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the first to open a tin of Nescafé). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these books at a impressionable age. I assumed for a while that that’s what the upper class genuinely felt.

They were, however, remarkably tightly written, high-functioning romances, which is much harder than it seems. You experienced Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s difficult relatives, Emily’s loneliness in Scotland – Cooper could transport you from an hopeless moment to a windfall of the heart, and you could not once, even in the beginning, identify how she managed it. One minute you’d be chuckling at her meticulously detailed depictions of the sheets, the next you’d have emotional response and little understanding how they arrived.

Literary Guidance

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 assist a aspiring writer: use all five of your perceptions, say how things scented and looked and audible and tactile and palatable – it greatly improves the writing. But likely more helpful was: “Always keep a diary – it’s very challenging, when you’re mid-twenties, to remember what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you detect, in the more extensive, densely peopled books, which have numerous female leads rather than just a single protagonist, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called Helen. Even an generational gap of four years, between two siblings, between a man and a female, you can detect in the dialogue.

The Lost Manuscript

The backstory of Riders was so exactly typical of the author it might not have been accurate, except it certainly was real because a major newspaper made a public request about it at the time: she wrote the complete book in 1970, prior to the early novels, brought it into the West End and forgot it on a public transport. Some texture has been purposely excluded of this story – what, for case, was so important in the West End that you would abandon the unique draft of your book on a bus, which is not that different from abandoning your baby on a train? Certainly an assignation, but what sort?

Cooper was wont to embellish her own messiness and clumsiness