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Jilly Cooper, who died suddenly at the 88 years of age, sold 11m volumes of her various grand books over her 50-year career in writing. Beloved by every sensible person over a specific age (forty-five), she was introduced to a modern audience last year with the TV adaptation of Rivals.

The Rutshire Chronicles

Cooper purists would have liked to watch the Rutshire chronicles in chronological order: commencing with Riders, initially released 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 effectively Cooper’s fictional realm had remained relevant. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the broad shoulders and puffball skirts; the obsession with class; the upper class looking down on the ostentatious newly wealthy, both dismissing everyone else while they snipped about how warm their bubbly was; the sexual politics, with unwanted advances and abuse so commonplace they were almost characters in their own right, a duo you could trust to advance the story.

While Cooper might have inhabited this era fully, she was never the typical fish not seeing the ocean because it’s ubiquitous. She had a compassion and an keen insight that you might not expect from her public persona. Everyone, from the canine to the equine to her family to her international student's relative, was always “absolutely sweet” – unless, that is, they were “completely exquisite”. People got groped and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s surprising how tolerated it is in many far more literary books of the era.

Class and Character

She was well-to-do, which for practical purposes meant that her dad had to work for a living, but she’d have described the strata more by their values. The middle classes fretted about every little detail, all the time – what other people might think, mostly – and the aristocracy didn’t give a … well “such things”. She was risqué, at times extremely, but her language was never coarse.

She’d narrate her upbringing in fairytale terms: “Dad went to battle and Mummy was extremely anxious”. They were both utterly beautiful, participating in a lifelong love match, and this Cooper replicated in her own partnership, to a businessman of military histories, Leo Cooper. She was in her mid-twenties, he was 27, the union wasn’t smooth sailing (he was a bit of a shagger), but she was never less than confident giving people the formula for a successful union, which is creaking bed springs but (big reveal), they’re squeaking with all the laughter. He never read her books – he picked up Prudence once, when he had influenza, and said it made him feel more ill. She didn’t mind, and said it was returned: she wouldn’t be seen dead reading military history.

Always keep a journal – it’s very difficult, when you’re 25, to recall what being 24 felt like

Initial Novels

Prudence (1978) was the fifth book in the Romance collection, which started with Emily in the mid-70s. If you approached Cooper in reverse, having begun in Rutshire, the Romances, alternatively called “those ones named after affluent ladies” – also Octavia and Harriet – were almost there, every male lead feeling like a prototype for Campbell-Black, every main character a little bit drippy. Plus, page for page (Without exact data), there wasn't the same quantity of sex in them. They were a bit conservative on issues of modesty, women always worrying that men would think they’re loose, men saying outrageous statements about why they liked virgins (similarly, ostensibly, as a genuine guy always wants to be the initial to open a container of coffee). I don’t know if I’d advise reading these novels at a impressionable age. I thought for a while that that’s what affluent individuals really thought.

They were, however, extremely precisely constructed, effective romances, which is far more difficult than it appears. You experienced Harriet’s surprise baby, Bella’s difficult family-by-marriage, Emily’s remote Scottish life – Cooper could take you from an all-is-lost moment to a windfall of the emotions, and you could not once, even in the beginning, identify how she did it. Suddenly you’d be smiling at her incredibly close depictions of the sheets, the next you’d have watery eyes and no idea how they got there.

Writing Wisdom

Asked how to be a novelist, Cooper used to say the kind of thing that the literary giant would have said, if he could have been arsed to guide a novice: use all five of your senses, say how things aromatic and looked and audible and tactile and palatable – it greatly improves the prose. But probably more useful was: “Always keep a diary – it’s very difficult, when you’re mid-twenties, to remember what age 24 felt like.” That’s one of the primary realizations you notice, in the more detailed, more populated books, which have seventeen main characters rather than just one lead, all with decidedly aristocratic names, unless they’re Stateside, in which case they’re called a simple moniker. Even an years apart of a few years, between two relatives, between a man and a female, you can perceive in the dialogue.

The Lost Manuscript

The historical account of Riders was so pitch-perfectly Jilly Cooper it couldn't possibly have been accurate, except it absolutely is factual because a London paper ran an appeal about it at the time: she completed the complete book in 1970, prior to the Romances, brought it into the downtown and left it on a public transport. Some context has been deliberately left out of this story – what, for example, was so crucial in the West End that you would leave the unique draft of your manuscript on a bus, which is not that different from forgetting your infant on a train? Certainly an meeting, but which type?

Cooper was wont to exaggerate her own disorder and clumsiness