[3] After unsuccessfully trying to begin a career in the British national press, Cooper became a junior reporter for The Middlesex Independent, based in Brentford.

Cooper's first column led to the publication of her first book, How to Stay Married, in 1969, and which was quickly followed by a guide to working life, How to Survive from Nine to Five, in 1970.

It was based on a short story she wrote for a teenage magazine, as were the subsequent romances, all titled with female names: Bella, Imogen, Prudence, Harriet and Octavia.

In October 1993, seven years after Private Eye had pointed out the similarities, Cooper admitted that sections of Emily and Bella were plagiarised from The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy, but said that it was not deliberate.

[11] The Times noted that Cooper avoids the traditional romantic convention in which the heroine remains a virgin until the last page.

The first version of Riders was written by 1970, but shortly after Cooper had finished it, she took it with her into the West End of London and left the manuscript on a bus.

[13] Riders and the following books feature intricate plots, multiple story lines and a large number of characters.

The stories heavily feature sexual infidelity and general betrayal, melodramatic misunderstandings and emotions, money worries and domestic upheavals.

[14] Each book of the Rutshire Chronicles is set in a glamorous and wealthy milieu, such as show jumping[15] or classical music.

[16] It features characters from the Rutshire Chronicles in the world of National Hunt steeplechase racing, and tells the transformation of a mutilated horse (Mrs Wilkinson) into a successful racehorse.

[16] After publication, it was revealed that Cooper had named a goat in the book (Chisolm) in order to hit back at the critic Anne Chisholm.

[2] Jilly Cooper was a passenger in one of the derailed carriages in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash of 1999, in which 31 people died,[19] and crawled through a window to escape.

Apart from Octavia, other productions include the television mini-series The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, starring Hugh Bonneville, produced by Sarah Lawson, Riders[31] and, in 2024, Rivals, starring David Tennant, Aiden Turner and Alex Hassell, produced by Eliza Mellor 'Little Mabel' series: The Rutshire Chronicles: