“It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Dame Jilly Cooper, DBE who died on Sunday morning, after a fall, at the age of 88,” a statement said.
The best-selling author was renowned for her raunchy, so-called “bonkbuster” novels, which portrayed the scandals and sex lives of wealthy country social circles, including Rivals, Riders and Polo.
She was praised for her blend of risqué storylines and critique of Britain’s class system, personified by showjumping lothario Rupert Campbell-Black.
Her children Felix and Emily said: “Mum was the shining light in all of our lives. 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.”
Dame Jilly was propelled to commercial success in the 1980s, and sold 11 million copies of her books during her more than fifty-year career.
Last year Rivals was adapted into a successful TV series, which she worked on as an executive producer.
Tributes to the author of ‘culture-defining bonkbusters’
The author’s many fans included former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who said the books offered “escapism”.
Her agent Felicity Blunt said: “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.”
She added: “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.”
Her publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said: “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 characterisation, she dissected the behaviour, bad mostly, of the English upper middle classes with the sharpest of scalpels.”
The ‘unholy terror’
Born in Essex in 1937, Jilly Cooper came from a Yorkshire family known for newspaper publishing and politics.
Her writing career began in 1956 as a junior reporter on the Middlesex Independent, covering everything from parties to football.
She had said she was known as the “unholy terror” at school, and was sacked from 22 jobs before finding her way into book publishing.
Dame Jilly started writing stories for women’s magazines in 1968, and found her break in 1969 when The Sunday Times published a story on being an ”undomesticated” homemaker. It gave rise to a column that lasted over 13 years.
In 2019 she won the inaugural Comedy Women in Print lifetime achievement award, and in 2024 was made a dame for her services to literature and charity.
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