Absolutely Divine! How Jilly Cooper Transformed the World – A Single Bonkbuster at a Time

The celebrated author Jilly Cooper, who left us unexpectedly at the 88 years of age, sold 11m volumes of her assorted sweeping books over her half-century literary career. Adored by every sensible person over a particular age (forty-five), she was brought to a new generation last year with the Disney+ adaptation of Rivals.

The Beloved Series

Longtime readers would have liked to watch the Rutshire chronicles in sequence: commencing with Riders, originally published in 1985, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, heartbreaker, equestrian, is debuts. But that’s a side note – what was remarkable about watching Rivals as a complete series was how well Cooper’s world had stood the test of time. The chronicles encapsulated the 1980s: the broad shoulders and bubble skirts; the fixation on status; the upper class looking down on the ostentatious newly wealthy, both dismissing everyone else while they complained about how lukewarm their sparkling wine was; the intimate power struggles, with inappropriate behavior and abuse so routine they were practically personas in their own right, a pair you could trust to drive the narrative forward.

While Cooper might have occupied this era fully, she was never the proverbial fish not noticing the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a humanity and an observational intelligence that you might not expect from listening to her speak. Every character, from the dog to the horse to her mother and father to her French exchange’s brother, was always “utterly charming” – unless, that is, they were “completely exquisite”. People got assaulted and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never acceptable – it’s remarkable how tolerated it is in many supposedly sophisticated books of the era.

Background and Behavior

She was affluent middle-class, which for real-world terms meant that her parent had to hold down a job, but she’d have described the classes more by their mores. The middle-class people worried about every little detail, all the time – what others might think, mainly – and the upper classes didn’t give a … well “such things”. She was risqué, at times extremely, but her dialogue was always refined.

She’d describe her childhood in idyllic language: “Daddy went to Dunkirk and Mummy was terribly, terribly worried”. They were both absolutely stunning, participating in a eternal partnership, and this Cooper mirrored in her own marriage, to a editor of historical accounts, Leo Cooper. She was twenty-four, he was in his late twenties, the relationship wasn’t perfect (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was consistently at ease giving people the secret for a happy marriage, which is squeaky bed but (crucial point), they’re noisy with all the joy. 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 seen dead reading battle accounts.

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

The Romance Series

Prudence (the late 70s) was the fifth book in the Romance series, which began with Emily in the mid-70s. If you came to Cooper backwards, having started in the main series, the Romances, alternatively called “the books named after posh girls” – also Octavia and Harriet – were near misses, every hero feeling like a trial version for the iconic character, every heroine a little bit drippy. Plus, chapter for chapter (Without exact data), there wasn’t as much sex in them. They were a bit uptight on topics of modesty, women always fretting that men would think they’re immoral, men saying outrageous statements about why they liked virgins (comparably, ostensibly, as a true gentleman always wants to be the initial to open a container of instant coffee). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these books at a young age. I thought for a while that that was what affluent individuals genuinely felt.

They were, however, remarkably well-crafted, high-functioning romances, which is far more difficult than it seems. You experienced Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s difficult family-by-marriage, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an hopeless moment to a jackpot of the emotions, and you could not ever, even in the beginning, identify how she managed it. Suddenly you’d be chuckling at her meticulously detailed descriptions of the sheets, the following moment you’d have watery eyes and no idea how they arrived.

Literary Guidance

Inquired how to be a writer, Cooper would often state the kind of thing that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been bothered to assist a beginner: employ all five of your faculties, say how things aromatic and appeared and sounded and touched and palatable – it really lifts the prose. But likely more helpful was: “Constantly keep a diary – it’s very hard, when you’re 25, to remember what being 24 felt like.” That’s one of the initial observations you observe, in the more extensive, densely peopled books, which have 17 heroines rather than just one lead, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re from the US, in which case they’re called a simple moniker. Even an age difference of several years, between two siblings, between a male and a female, you can hear in the dialogue.

A Literary Mystery

The backstory of Riders was so perfectly Jilly Cooper it can’t possibly have been real, except it certainly was real because a London paper made a public request about it at the era: she completed the complete book in the early 70s, well before the first books, brought it into the downtown and misplaced it on a bus. Some texture has been intentionally omitted of this tale – what, for example, was so significant in the urban area that you would leave the only copy of your manuscript on a train, which is not that far from forgetting your infant on a transport? Undoubtedly an meeting, but what sort?

Cooper was inclined to amp up her own disorder and clumsiness