Cooper’s publisher, Bill Scott-Kerr, said that “Jilly may have worn her influence lightly but she was a true trailblazer”.
British novelist and writer Jilly Cooper signing copies of her anthology The British in Love at Barkers department store in Kensington, London. Photo / Getty Images
He praised her steamy novels as “a winning combination of glorious storytelling, wicked social commentary and deft, lacerating characterisation”.
Cooper was born Jill Sallitt on February 21, 1937.
Her best-selling novels were famously filled with sex, snobbery and fun, and boasted suggestive titles such as Tackle!, Mount! and Score!.
She said in an interview before the Disney+ release: “People like love stories to cheer them up. And that’s what I’ve always wanted to do: cheer people up.”
British Conservative former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak professed himself “a genuine fan” in 2023, adding: “You have to have escapism in your life.”
The writer had “dissected the behaviour, bad mostly, of the English upper middle classes with the sharpest of scalpels”, Scott-Kerr said, adding Riders had “changed the course of popular fiction forever”.
Dame Jilly Cooper was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2024. Photo / Getty Images
Cooper’s children, Felix and Emily, said their mother’s “unexpected death has come as a complete shock”.
“We are so proud of everything she achieved in her life and can’t begin to imagine life without her infectious smile and laughter all around us,” they said in a statement.
‘Ribald, rollicking’
Cooper’s books sold 11 million copies in the UK alone.
Her work spanned 18 novels and short fiction, as well as 20 works of non-fiction, which provided “a window into her own life” as well as “acute observations on the essence of a certain type of Englishness”, said Scott-Kerr.
The Rutshire Chronicles were “ribald, rollicking and the very definition of good fun … and were to inspire a generation of women writers”, he said.
Cooper’s funeral is set to be private, in line with her wishes, but a public service of thanksgiving will be held in the coming months in Southwark Cathedral.
Author Jilly Cooper poses for a portrait at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 9, 2010 in Cheltenham, England. Photo / Getty Images
Camilla wished in her message that Cooper’s “hereafter be filled with impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs”.
Cooper’s publicist Felicity Blunt said she had “lost a friend, an ally, a confidante and a mentor”.
“I know she will live forever in the words she put on the page and on the screen.”
A 2024 hit adaptation of Rivals on Disney+ brought dashing and caddish hero Rupert Campbell-Black – said to be partly based on Camilla’s former husband Andrew Parker Bowles – to a new audience.
It starred popular UK actors David Tennant and Danny Dyer.
Blunt said in her statement that Cooper had written with “acuity and insight about all things – class, sex, marriage, rivalry, grief and fertility”.
“You wouldn’t expect books categorised as bonkbusters to have so emphatically stood the test of time.”
– Agence France-Presse