British author Jilly Cooper has died at the age of 88 after a fall — with her children describing her sudden death as a “complete shock.”
The beloved writer of romance novels including Rivals, Riders and Polo died on the morning of Sunday, October 5, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Cooper’s son and daughter Felix and Emily released an emotional statement confirming the sad news. “Mum was the shining light of all of our lives,” they wrote. “Her love for all of her family and friends knew no bounds. Her 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.”
Cooper’s agent of many years, Felicity Blunt, added: “The privilege of my career has been working with a woman who has defined culture, writing and conversation since she was first published over fifty years ago. Jilly will undoubtedly be best remembered for her chart-topping series The Rutshire Chronicles and its havoc-making and handsome show-jumping hero Rupert Campbell-Black. You wouldn’t expect books categorised 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.”
Blunt continued: “Her plots were both intricate and gutsy, spiked with sharp observations and wicked humour. She regularly mined her own life for inspiration and there was something Austenesque about her dissections of society, its many prejudices and norms. But if you tried to pay her this compliment, or any compliment, she would brush it aside. She wrote, she said, simply ‘to add to the sum of human happiness’. In this regard as a writer she was and remains unbeatable.”
Cooper was born in 1937 in Essex, England. After beginning a career in journalism, her big break came thanks to a chance conversation at a dinner party with the editor of The Sunday Times magazine. She then became a relationships columnist before publishing her first book, How To Stay Married, in 1969.
In 1961, she married Leo Cooper, who also worked in publishing and died in 2013 at the age of 79. As well as sharing their two children, they had five grandchildren.
Most recently, Cooper served as executive producer for the brilliant Disney+ adaptation of her popular novel, Rivals. “Her suggestions for story and dialogue inevitably layered and enriched scripts and her presence on set was a joy for cast and crew alike,” said Blunt. “Emotionally intelligent, fantastically generous, sharply observant and utter fun Jilly Cooper will be deeply missed by all at Curtis Brown and on the set of Rivals. 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 loved ones are now planning to celebrate her life at a public service of thanksgiving at London’s Southwark Cathedral.
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