Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Legacy of Jilly Cooper
- Early Life
- Career Highlights
- Personal Life
- Reflections on Life
- FAQ
KING Charles may have honored her with a Damehood for her contributions to literature, but Jilly Cooper was undeniably the Queen of the Bonkbuster genre.
Jilly is best known as the author of the provocative Rutshire Chronicles—a series of novels filled with tales of romance, horses, and scandals set in the English countryside.
Jilly Cooper has left an enduring legacy over the years, despite acknowledging that she was an ‘unholy terror’ in her younger days.
Jilly Cooper photographed at her home in Putney in 1978.
The iconic author after receiving her Damehood.
Jilly with the cast of Rivals.
Jilly had been writing her books since the late 1960s.
With titles such as Riders, Jump!, Mount!, Polo, and The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, her stories of infidelity and betrayal have sold over 12 million copies in the UK alone.
Last year, Disney+ adapted Rivals into a successful TV drama featuring talented actors, including Alex Hassell as the ‘dangerously charismatic’ Rupert Campbell-Black.
Rupert Campbell-Black, a showjumper, was the dashing yet wicked protagonist in her first Rutshire hit, Riders, which became a bestseller in 1985.
Remarkably, this bestselling book almost never reached the shelves.
Jilly first penned the story in 1970 after overhearing a mother at a polo match casually remark: “Wherever my son goes, he gets mounted in half an hour.”
This single quip inspired her to write a racy tale set in the equestrian world, but she accidentally left the only manuscript on a bus, and despite attempts to recover it, it was lost forever.
It took her another decade to rewrite Riders.
When the novel was finally completed, it became a global sensation, launching her career.
Born on February 21, 1937, in Hornchurch, Jill Sallitt moved shortly thereafter to Ilkley, West Yorkshire, where her passion for horses and charming men blossomed.
Many of the male characters in Jilly’s novels were inspired by her father, Brigadier William Sallitt, a Dunkirk veteran who played rugby for the University.
In a screened interview a year ago, Jilly reflected: “I was very naughty at school.
“I don’t know why I was so mischievous; I was known as the unholy terror in the staff room, giggling with friends or writing letters to boys. All I thought about was men. It’s awful, awful, awful.”
She shared that all her friends were keen to “get off” with her handsome brother, Timothy.
“He was arrogant and a skilled game hunter,” she admitted.
“My father and Timothy were both very masculine and aware of their charm. They took care of women but were also the leaders. My father adored my mother.”
It was here that she first met the man who would become her husband—Leo Cooper—when she was eight and he was 11.
Jill reminisced: “My first memory of Leo was seeing him looking out of my bedroom window in Ilkley, throwing a strawberry jelly at a girl who was bragging about how much land her father owned. I thought that was terribly stylish.”
She attended the all-girls Godolphin School in Salisbury, where she excelled in English and confessed to spending too much time “longing for boys.”
In the 1950s, her family relocated to London, where she did not gain admission to university and began her career as a junior reporter for the Independent.
