Absolutely Divine! The Way Jilly Cooper Revolutionized the World – A Single Steamy Bestseller at a Time

The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the 88 years old, achieved sales of eleven million books of her many grand books over her 50-year literary career. Adored by all discerning readers over a specific age (mid-forties), she was brought to a younger audience last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Cooper purists would have liked to view the Rutshire chronicles in order: beginning with Riders, originally published in the mid-80s, in which the character Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, charmer, equestrian, is initially presented. But that’s a side note – what was striking about watching Rivals as a complete series was how well Cooper’s world had stood the test of time. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the power dressing and puffball skirts; the fixation on status; nobility looking down on the Technicolored nouveau riche, both dismissing everyone else while they complained about how lukewarm their champagne was; the intimate power struggles, with harassment and misconduct so routine they were almost characters in their own right, a pair you could count on to move the plot along.

While Cooper might have inhabited this period completely, she was never the typical fish not perceiving the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a empathy and an perceptive wisdom that you could easily miss from her public persona. Everyone, from the dog to the horse to her parents to her French exchange’s brother, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got harassed and more in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s astonishing how tolerated it is in many more highbrow books of the period.

Background and Behavior

She was affluent middle-class, which for practical purposes meant that her father had to work for a living, but she’d have described the classes more by their mores. The middle-class people worried about all things, all the time – what others might think, primarily – and the elite didn’t care a … well “nonsense”. She was spicy, at times very much, but her language was never coarse.

She’d describe her childhood in idyllic language: “Daddy went to Dunkirk and Mom was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both utterly beautiful, involved in a enduring romance, and this Cooper mirrored in her own union, to a editor of military histories, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was 27, the marriage wasn’t perfect (he was a unfaithful type), but she was always confident giving people the secret for a successful union, which is noisy mattress but (key insight), they’re noisy with all the laughter. He never read her books – he read Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel unwell. She didn’t mind, and said it was mutual: she wouldn’t be spotted reading battle accounts.

Forever keep a notebook – it’s very challenging, when you’re 25, to recollect what being 24 felt like

Early Works

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance series, which commenced with Emily in 1975. If you approached Cooper in reverse, having started in the main series, the Romances, AKA “the novels named after posh girls” – also Imogen and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every male lead feeling like a trial version for Rupert, every heroine a little bit drippy. Plus, chapter for chapter (Without exact data), there was less sex in them. They were a bit conservative on matters of modesty, women always being anxious that men would think they’re promiscuous, men saying outrageous statements about why they preferred virgins (similarly, apparently, as a true gentleman always wants to be the initial to break a container of coffee). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these stories at a young age. I thought for a while that that is what affluent individuals actually believed.

They were, however, extremely precisely constructed, successful romances, which is much harder than it seems. You lived Harriet’s surprise baby, Bella’s difficult relatives, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could guide you from an desperate moment to a jackpot of the heart, and you could never, even in the initial stages, pinpoint how she managed it. Suddenly you’d be chuckling at her highly specific descriptions of the sheets, the following moment you’d have emotional response and uncertainty how they got there.

Literary Guidance

Questioned how to be a writer, Cooper would often state the sort of advice that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been inclined to guide a novice: employ all 5 of your faculties, say how things scented and seemed and sounded and tactile and palatable – it really lifts the prose. But perhaps more practical was: “Constantly keep a journal – it’s very hard, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the first things you detect, in the longer, densely peopled books, which have 17 heroines rather than just a single protagonist, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re American, in which case they’re called a common name. Even an years apart of four years, between two sisters, between a man and a female, you can detect in the speech.

A Literary Mystery

The backstory of Riders was so perfectly typical of the author it might not have been accurate, except it absolutely is true because a major newspaper ran an appeal about it at the era: she completed the whole manuscript in 1970, long before the first books, brought it into the city center and misplaced it on a public transport. Some detail has been intentionally omitted of this story – what, for instance, was so significant in the urban area 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? Undoubtedly an assignation, but which type?

Cooper was wont to embellish her own chaos and clumsiness