Absolutely Divine! The Way Jilly Cooper Transformed the World – A Single Racy Novel at a Time

The beloved novelist Jilly Cooper, who passed away unexpectedly at the 88 years old, achieved sales of eleven million copies of her various grand books over her 50-year literary career. Beloved by every sensible person over a particular age (45), she was brought to a younger audience last year with the streaming series adaptation of Rivals.

Cooper's Fictional Universe

Devoted fans would have liked to view the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: beginning with Riders, first published in the mid-80s, in which Rupert Campbell-Black, cad, heartbreaker, rider, is initially presented. But that’s a sidebar – what was notable about viewing Rivals as a binge-watch was how brilliantly Cooper’s world had remained relevant. The chronicles distilled the 1980s: the broad shoulders and bubble skirts; the obsession with class; the upper class disdaining the Technicolored nouveau riche, both dismissing everyone else while they snipped about how lukewarm their sparkling wine was; the gender dynamics, with unwanted advances and abuse so everyday they were almost characters in their own right, a pair you could rely on to advance the story.

While Cooper might have occupied this era fully, she was never the classic fish not seeing the ocean because it’s everywhere. She had a compassion and an observational intelligence that you maybe wouldn’t guess from her public persona. All her creations, from the canine to the horse to her family to her French exchange’s brother, was always “utterly charming” – unless, that is, they were “truly heavenly”. People got assaulted and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s astonishing how acceptable it is in many far more literary books of the time.

Social Strata and Personality

She was affluent middle-class, which for all intents and purposes meant that her dad had to hold down a job, but she’d have defined the classes more by their values. The bourgeoisie anxiously contemplated about all things, all the time – what others might think, mostly – and the elite didn’t give a … well “nonsense”. She was risqué, at times very much, but her language was never coarse.

She’d recount her upbringing in idyllic language: “Dad 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 businessman of military histories, Leo Cooper. She was 24, he was 27, the union wasn’t perfect (he was a philanderer), but she was consistently confident giving people the formula for a blissful partnership, which is creaking bed springs but (crucial point), they’re noisy with all the joy. He avoided reading her books – he tried Prudence once, when he had a cold, and said it made him feel more ill. She wasn't bothered, and said it was reciprocated: she wouldn’t be caught reading battle accounts.

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

Early Works

Prudence (1978) was the fifth volume in the Romance collection, which began with Emily in 1975. If you came to Cooper in reverse, having begun in the main series, the early novels, AKA “the books named after posh girls” – also Imogen and Harriet – were close but no cigar, every protagonist feeling like a prototype for the iconic character, every heroine a little bit drippy. Plus, page for page (I can't verify statistically), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit reserved on topics of propriety, women always fretting that men would think they’re immoral, men saying ridiculous comments about why they preferred virgins (in much the same way, seemingly, as a genuine guy always wants to be the first to break a jar of coffee). I don’t know if I’d recommend reading these stories at a impressionable age. I assumed for a while that that is what affluent individuals genuinely felt.

They were, however, remarkably well-crafted, effective romances, which is far more difficult than it appears. You experienced Harriet’s unplanned pregnancy, Bella’s annoying relatives, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an hopeless moment to a windfall of the soul, and you could never, even in the early days, put your finger on how she managed it. Suddenly you’d be chuckling at her highly specific accounts of the bedding, the following moment you’d have watery eyes and little understanding how they got there.

Literary Guidance

Questioned how to be a novelist, Cooper used to say the kind of thing that Ernest Hemingway would have said, if he could have been inclined to help out a novice: utilize all five of your faculties, say how things scented and appeared and heard and touched 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 initial observations you notice, in the more extensive, more populated books, which have 17 heroines rather than just one, all with extremely posh names, unless they’re American, in which case they’re called a simple moniker. Even an years apart of a few years, between two siblings, between a man and a female, you can hear in the dialogue.

An Author's Tale

The backstory of Riders was so perfectly characteristically Cooper it can’t possibly have been real, except it absolutely is real because a major newspaper published a notice about it at the time: she wrote the entire draft in 1970, long before the early novels, took it into the West End and misplaced it on a bus. Some context has been intentionally omitted of this story – what, for instance, was so significant in the city that you would leave the only copy of your book on a public transport, which is not that unlike leaving your infant on a train? Surely an assignation, but what sort?

Cooper was inclined to amp up her own messiness and clumsiness