Jilly Cooper, 1937-2025
Beloved author Dame Jilly Cooper, DBE, passed away on Sunday 5th October 2025, following a fall. She was 88 years old and is survived by her children Felix and Emily.
Dame Jilly Cooper is best known for her Rutshire Chronicles series, starting with Riders, which was published in 1985. The novel, the first in an 11-part book series, revolutionised fiction with its frank depictions of sex and scandal in the English countryside. A phenomenal best-seller, it influenced a wave of future readers and novelists alike as one of the first examples of “bonkbuster” fiction.
“It is no exaggeration to say that Riders, her first Rutshire chronicle, changed the course of popular fiction forever,” Bill Scott-Kerr, Dame Jilly Cooper’s publisher, said in a statement following her death. “Ribald, rollicking and the very definition of good fun, it, and the ten Rutshire novels which followed it, were to inspire a generation of women, writers and otherwise, to tell it how it was, whilst giving us a cast of characters who would define a generation and beyond.”
Over the course of her distinguished career, Dame Jilly wrote 18 novels and works of short fiction, as well as over 20 non-fiction books. She was awarded several honours over her lifetime, including an OBE in 2004, a CBE in 2018 and a DBE in 2024, for her services to literature and charity.
Dame Jilly was born in Hornchurch, Essex, in 1937 and started her career as a journalist, before moving into PR and writing fiction. Her debut novel, Emily, was published by Transworld in 1975, the first in a series of romances based on magazine stories she had written. Bella (1976), Harriet (1976), Octavia (1977), Imogen (1978) and Prudence (1978) followed suit.
As well as fiction, she wrote incisive and witty non-fiction books on everything from relationships (How to Stay Married, in 1969) to life in London (The Common Years, in 1984) as well as the history of animals (Animals in War, in 1983) and the intricacies and absurdities of English customs (Class, in 1979).
“Working with Jilly Cooper over the past thirty years has been one of the great privileges and joys of my publishing life,” said Bill Scott-Kerr. “Beyond her genius as a novelist, she was always a personal heroine of mine for so many other reasons. For her kindness and friendship, for her humour and irrepressible enthusiasm, for her curiosity, for her courage, and for her profound love of animals. 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.”
Dame Jilly’s novels inspired multiple adaptations – Riders (1985) and The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous (1993) were adapted for the small screen in the 1990s. Just last year, Rivals (1988) was adapted into a critically acclaimed series on Disney+, with the author serving as an executive producer.
Her work has earned her a legion of well-known fans, including Olivia Laing, Ian Patterson, Caitlin Moran (who called her “the Jane Austen of our times”) and even former prime minister Rishi Sunak. “I’m a genuine fan,” Sunak said in 2023 of her work. “You need to have escapism in your life.”
Dame Jilly’s agent, Felicity Blunt, has said that working with the beloved author has been the “privilege of [her] career”.
In a statement she said, “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 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.”
Meanwhile, Penguin Random House UK CEO, Tom Weldon has recalled the joy of working with Dame Jilly over many years, saying: “The last time I saw Jilly was at an authors’ lunch to celebrate Penguin’s 90th birthday in June. Her opening conversational gambit with whoever she was introduced to was to ask them, ‘do you have dogs?’. The next moment she was extolling the virtues of racing trainer Nicky Henderson (‘a genius’). And then a moment later, she was enthusing about the artist, Sargy Mann, who went blind and then painted the best pictures of his career in the last decade of his life (‘another genius’). Jilly was a person full of surprises and (sometimes) hidden depths. I adored her. I will treasure forever the Valentine cards she sent me, whilst knowing Jilly had many valentines, such was her generosity, warmth, intelligence, vitality, and wicked sense of humour.”
Dame Jilly Cooper is survived by her two children, Felix and Emily, who said in a statement: “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.”