Dame Jilly Cooper, "who captured millions of readers with her raunchy tales set amid horse-loving high society," died October 5, the Guardian reported. She was 88. Cooper was best known for the Rutshire Chronicles, which include Riders, Rivals, and most recently, Tackle!. Rivals was adapted as a TV series for Disney+.
The Bookseller noted that Queen Camilla released the following statement: "I was so saddened to learn of Dame Jilly's death last night. Very few writers get to be a legend in their own lifetime but Jilly was one, creating a whole new genre of literature and making it her own through a career that spanned over five decades.
"In person she was a wonderfully witty and compassionate friend to me and so many--and it was a particular pleasure to see her just a few weeks ago at my Queen's Reading Room Festival where she was, as ever, a star of the show. I join my husband the King in sending our thoughts and sympathies to all her family. And may her hereafter be filled with impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs."
Cooper's novels "defined culture, writing, and conversation since she was first published over 50 years ago," said her agent, Felicity Blunt. "You wouldn't expect books categorized as bonkbusters to have so emphatically stood the test of time but Jilly wrote with acuity and insight about all things--class, sex, marriage, rivalry, grief and fertility."
Bill Scott-Kerr, her publisher at Transworld, observed: "Working with Jilly Cooper over the past 30 years has been one of the great privileges and joys of my publishing life.... Jilly may have worn her influence lightly but she was a true trailblazer. As a journalist she went where others feared to tread and as a novelist she did likewise. With a winning combination of glorious storytelling, wicked social commentary and deft, lacerating characterization, she dissected the behavior, bad mostly, of the English upper middle classes with the sharpest of scalpels."
He added that Transworld "has been blessed to be her publishers for 50 years since we published Emily in 1975--her work spanned 18 novels and short fiction as well as over 20 books of nonfiction which were not only a window into her own life, but also acute observations on the essence of a certain type of Englishness. The Common Years, in particular, was a particular reader favorite."
Cooper began her writing career in journalism as a cub reporter on the Middlesex Independent in 1956, before moving into PR. In 1961, she married publisher Leo Cooper and during the late 1960s, she began writing columns for the Sunday Times before moving to the Mail on Sunday in 1982. Her first book, the nonfiction title How to Stay Married, was published in 1969 and her debut novel, Emily, was released in 1975, "the first of a series of romances based on magazine stories she had published. Bella, Imogen, Prudence, Harriet, and Octavia would follow, plus a collection of short stories, Lisa & Co, in 1981," the Guardian noted.
Riders, the first of 11 Rutshire Chronicles books, appeared in 1985, followed by Rivals in 1988. She also wrote several books for children about a mongrel, Mabel, and many nonfiction titles, including Class, about the English class system. Cooper was honored with a damehood in the 2024 new year honors list for her services to literature and charity.
Author Olivia Laing told the Guardian that Cooper was "the absolute queen, a person of such total generosity and life.... 'Bonkbuster' captures the essential joyfulness of these books, the central role of sex, but it doesn’t quite do justice to their wit and complexity as social comedy, let alone the beadiness of Jilly's eye on class, her knack for satirizing selfishness and pretension, and her gift for understanding loneliness and isolation."
Jenny Colgan noted that "it is nice to hope she got her wish, that: 'When you arrive in heaven, all your dogs come rushing across a green lawn to meet you.' "