The Hollywood Reporter<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\nCooper\u2019s son and daughter Felix<\/strong> and Emily<\/strong> released an emotional statement confirming the sad news. \u201cMum was the shining light of all of her lives,\u201d they wrote. \u201cHer 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\u2019t begin to imagine life without her infectious smile and laughter all around us.\u201d<\/p>\nCooper\u2019s agent of many years, Felicity Blunt<\/strong>, added: \u201cThe privilege of my career has been working with a woman who has defined culture, writing and conversation since she was first published over fifty years ago. Jilly will undoubtedly be best remembered for her chart-topping series The Rutshire Chronicles<\/em> and its havoc-making and handsome show-jumping hero Rupert Campbell-Black. You wouldn\u2019t expect books categorised as bonkbusters to have so emphatically stood the test of time but Jilly wrote with acuity and insight about all things \u2014 class, sex, marriage, rivalry, grief and fertility.\u201d<\/p>\nBlunt continued: \u201cHer 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 \u2018to add to the sum of human happiness\u2019. In this regard as a writer she was and remains unbeatable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cooper was born in 1937 in Essex, England. After beginning a career in journalism, her big break came thanks to a chance conversation at a dinner party with the editor of The Sunday Times<\/em> magazine. She then became a relationships columnist before publishing her first book, How To Stay Married<\/em>, in 1969.<\/p>\n