While I read and utterly adored Cooper’s books as a teenager (after I graduated from Judy Blume’s Forever), I don’t know much about her legacy or how hard she worked to make her writing seem so effortless. Luckily, Kat Brown, a long-time Stylist contributor and Jilly Cooper devotee (she’s part of a book group dedicated to Cooper’s books, so she knows her stuff) was on hand to help me.

“Jilly Cooper was a wildly successful journalist before she was an author, and she brought that eye for detail and character to her novels (which is why they were so successful and made people so cross),” Brown says. “Back in the 70s, she was hailed as the Jane Austen of our times by Harper’s magazine, and certainly her huge casts have always entertained the hell out of me and her other legions of readers because she captures her characters so well. She has a merciless eye for what makes people tick and what their weaknesses are. Sure, you can be a TV baron or a top-tier actor, but you’re still going to be fretting about something colossally mundane. She also writes hilarious, well-rounded men as well as women. Every person we meet feels totally real, which I took for granted as a younger reader. It was only as I read more widely that I appreciated what an incredibly rare skill that is.”

Many male writers could learn a thing or two.

“Sex scenes and social commentary: look down on Rivals at your peril”