Jilly Cooper books

Anthologies

Non-Fiction

Picture Reading Order

Rutshire Chronicles Reading Order

Short Story Collections

Standalone Novels

Jilly Cooper is one of Britain’s best-known popular authors, with a career stretching from the early 1970s to the 2020s. She first made her name as a newspaper columnist, producing collections of witty observations about English social life, before turning to fiction in the mid-1970s with novels like Emily, Bella, and Harriet. Her early novels are lighthearted romances about young women finding their way through love and life.

Cooper’s greatest success came with the Rutshire Chronicles, starting with Riders in 1985. These sprawling novels mix horse racing, television rivalries, classical music, polo, and a great deal of romantic entanglement, all set against the backdrop of the English countryside. The series became a cultural phenomenon in Britain, and the term “bonkbuster” is often associated with Cooper’s particular brand of long, funny, and very racy storytelling. She was awarded a CBE for services to literature.

Beyond fiction, Cooper has written extensively about animals, class, sport, and British culture. Her nonfiction includes Class (a satirical guide to the English social hierarchy), Animals in War, and several books on cricket and rugby co-written with her husband Leo Cooper. She also wrote the Little Mabel series of children’s picture books in the early 1980s.