Absolutely Divine! How Jilly Cooper Transformed the Literary Landscape – One Racy Novel at a Time

Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the 88 years of age, sold 11 million books of her various sweeping books over her half-century literary career. Cherished by all discerning readers over a particular 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 liked to watch the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: beginning with Riders, originally published in the mid-80s, in which the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, rogue, heartbreaker, rider, is initially presented. But that’s a side note – what was remarkable about viewing Rivals as a complete series was how effectively Cooper’s fictional realm had aged. The chronicles captured the 1980s: the shoulder pads and voluminous skirts; the fixation on status; nobility sneering at the flashy new money, both ignoring everyone else while they quibbled about how warm their champagne was; the gender dynamics, with harassment and assault so routine they were practically characters in their own right, a duo you could trust to advance the story.

While Cooper might have lived in this era completely, she was never the typical fish not seeing the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a compassion and an observational intelligence that you might not expect from hearing her talk. Every character, from the pet to the pony to her family to her foreign exchange sibling, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “completely exquisite”. People got assaulted and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never condoned – it’s astonishing how OK it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the period.

Class and Character

She was upper-middle-class, which for practical purposes meant that her parent had to earn an income, but she’d have described the classes more by their mores. The middle-class people fretted about all things, all the time – what society might think, mainly – and the upper classes didn’t care a … well “stuff”. She was spicy, at times extremely, but her dialogue was always refined.

She’d narrate her family life in idyllic language: “Dad went to battle and Mother was extremely anxious”. They were both absolutely stunning, engaged in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper emulated in her own marriage, to a businessman of war books, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was twenty-seven, the union wasn’t smooth sailing (he was a unfaithful type), but she was never less than comfortable giving people the secret for a successful union, which is noisy mattress but (crucial point), they’re creaking with all the mirth. He didn't read her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel worse. She took no offense, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be caught reading battle accounts.

Always keep a diary – it’s very hard, when you’re twenty-five, to recall what being 24 felt like

The Romance Series

Prudence (1978) was the fifth installment in the Romance novels, which began with Emily in the mid-70s. If you approached Cooper in reverse, having begun in her later universe, the Romances, also known as “the books named after upper-class women” – also Imogen and Harriet – were near misses, every hero feeling like a prototype for Rupert, every female lead a little bit drippy. Plus, chapter for chapter (I can't verify statistically), there was less sex in them. They were a bit uptight on matters of decorum, women always worrying that men would think they’re promiscuous, men saying ridiculous comments about why they preferred virgins (comparably, apparently, as a genuine guy always wants to be the first to open 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 was what the upper class genuinely felt.

They were, however, extremely precisely constructed, successful romances, which is much harder than it seems. You experienced Harriet’s unwanted pregnancy, Bella’s pissy relatives, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could guide you from an all-is-lost moment to a jackpot of the soul, and you could never, even in the beginning, identify how she did it. One minute you’d be smiling at her incredibly close depictions of the bedding, the subsequently you’d have tears in your eyes and uncertainty how they arrived.

Literary Guidance

Asked how to be a author, Cooper frequently advised the type of guidance that Ernest Hemingway would have said, if he could have been arsed to help out a aspiring writer: employ all all of your faculties, say how things scented and looked and heard and tactile and palatable – it significantly enhances the writing. But perhaps more practical was: “Constantly keep a notebook – it’s very hard, when you’re twenty-five, to recollect what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the first things you notice, in the more detailed, densely peopled 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 years apart of several years, between two siblings, between a man and a lady, you can perceive in the dialogue.

An Author's Tale

The backstory of Riders was so perfectly Jilly Cooper it can’t possibly have been real, except it certainly was factual because a London paper published a notice about it at the time: she finished the whole manuscript in the early 70s, long before the first books, took it into the West End and forgot it on a public transport. Some context has been purposely excluded of this story – what, for instance, was so important in the city that you would abandon the only copy of your novel on a train, which is not that different from leaving your infant on a transport? Certainly an assignation, but what sort?

Cooper was inclined to exaggerate her own messiness and ineptitude