British author Jilly Cooper smiles after being appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) following an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle, southern England, on May 14, 2024. ANDREW MATTHEWS / AFP
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."
