By Sarah Young and Sam Tabahriti
LONDON (Reuters) -Jilly Cooper, the British author of novels such as "Rivals" and "Riders" whose 1980s bestsellers were a blend of sex, satire and class-based snobbery, has died aged 88, her agent said in a statement on Monday.
Cooper, a longstanding friend of Britain's Queen Camilla, sold 11 million copies of her books in Britain alone.
From the mid-1980s, her raunchy novels depicting the romantic adventures of an upper-class set of characters in the fictional county of Rutshire, modelled on Gloucestershire where she and Camilla both lived, gained huge commercial success.
QUEEN PLAYS TRIBUTE TO 'LEGEND'
Camilla called Cooper, a life-long dog-lover who was a guest at her 2005 marriage to King Charles, a "wonderfully witty and compassionate friend", in a statement issued by Buckingham Palace.
"Very few writers get to be a legend in their own lifetime but Jilly was one, creating a whole new genre of literature," Camilla said. "May her hereafter be filled with impossibly handsome men and devoted dogs."
Last year, "Rivals" found a new generation of fans when it was made into a series for Disney+. Sales of books published decades before shot up once again, as the themes of adultery and class rivalry thrilled younger audiences.
"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," Cooper's agent, Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown, said in the statement.
Cooper was born in Essex in 1937. In the 1960s, she was a newspaper columnist for the Sunday Times, commenting on marriage, sex and household chores, before she started writing novels in the 1970s.
It was not until Riders in 1985 that she had her breakthrough. At the centre of the story was Rupert Campbell-Black, a handsome, ruthless showjumper and womaniser, who lives in his family's manor house in Rutshire.
"There’s far less bonking now. People are so serious. I think we need more joy," Cooper said last year.
LIFE IN THE COTSWOLDS
Cooper had moved to Gloucestershire, in the wealthy Cotswolds area of western England, with her husband, Leo Cooper, a publisher of military history books in the early 1980s, and it was there she met Camilla.
Life amongst the aristocratic country estates and the honey-coloured villages of the area inspired her novels, Cooper said.
At that time Camilla was married to her first husband, Andrew Parker Bowles. Speaking on a podcast last year, Cooper compared him to her most famous character, the dashing rogue Rupert Campbell-Black.
"He's been a great friend for a long time... so he's very like Rupert. He's beautiful and blond and stunning," she said of the queen's first husband.
Cooper wrote more than 40 books, many of them produced in a summerhouse at the bottom of her garden while she listened to classical music.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer's spokesman on Monday called Cooper "a literary force", whose wit, warmth and wisdom brought joy to millions.
She died after a fall on Sunday, her agent's statement said. She and her husband had married in 1961 and had two adopted children. He died in 2013.
Filming for the sequel to "Rivals" began earlier this year.
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti; writing by Sarah Young, additional reporting by Michael Holden and Andrew MacAskill, Editing by Kate Holton, Alexandra Hudson and Alex Richardson)
