British author Jilly Cooper, known for her unapologetically raunchy romance novels, has died at the age of 88 following a fall, her agent and family said on Monday, October 6. A former journalist, Cooper penned the best-selling series of romantic novels known as The Rutshire Chronicles, which included Rivals, recently adapted for television by Disney+.
Cooper's publishing house, Curtis Brown, said in a statement that the writer, who was a friend of the UK's Queen Camilla, had died "on Sunday morning, after a fall." British Conservative former prime minister Rishi Sunak professed himself "a genuine fan" in 2023, adding: "You have to have escapism in your life."
"Jilly may have worn her influence lightly but she was a true trailblazer," her publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said in a statement. He praised her novels as "a winning combination of glorious storytelling, wicked social commentary and deft, lacerating characterization." He added: "(Cooper) dissected the behavior, bad mostly, of the English upper middle classes with the sharpest of scalpels," and that Riders had "changed the course of popular fiction forever."
Cooper was born Jill Sallitt on February 21, 1937. She said in an interview ahead of the Disney+ release: "People like love stories to cheer them up. And that's what I've always wanted to do: cheer people up." Her best-selling novels were famously filled with sex, snobbery and fun, and boasted suggestive titles such as Tackle!, Mount! and Score!.
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.
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 added.
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. "I have lost a friend, an ally, a confidante and a mentor. But I know she will live forever in the words she put on the page and on the screen," Cooper's publicist Felicity Blunt said.
A 2024 hit adaptation of Rivals on Disney+ brought dashing and caddish hero Rupert Campbell-Black – said to be partly based on Queen 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 categorized as bonkbusters to have so emphatically stood the test of time," she added.