Talk:Jilly Cooper

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Sad story of Sara Johnson

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In reading about the pop band "The Wedding Present," the FAQ (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/music/wedding-present-faq/) said that the song "Dalliance" (which is a great song) is "based on the sad story of Sara Johnson, the mistress of the husband of famous English author Jilly Cooper." Just curious, what's the sad story?--Tdkehoe 03:47, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Tdkehoe I just found this referred to in Cooper's husbadn's obituary see Lajmmoore (talk) 12:59, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Octavia

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The treatment of Octavia in a biographical article on its author is disproportionately long, with descriptions of its TV production even down to naming the first cast. It is surely more appropriate to make it the information the basis for an article on the work in its own right.Cloptonson (talk) 06:28, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

8 years later, and the section still seems disproportionate. It's by no means obvious that Octavia is significantly more important than JC's other romance novels, and she's hardly Jane Austen in any case. --Ef80 (talk) 17:21, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello @Ef80 & @Cloptonson I started a new article for Octavia (novel) and intend to work on the Cooper article during May. Lajmmoore (talk) 09:31, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, I only saw this message today having just heard of her death. Better way to treat her work.Cloptonson (talk) 09:14, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Romance section

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Just leaving a note to say if the romance section seems longer than the others, it's because I'm working on improving the article section by section, next up is the Rutshire Chronicles section in the next few weeks. Lajmmoore (talk) 12:54, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bonus question

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who knew.... she'd get a question on University Challenge. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:16, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmm @Martinevans123 I wonder if there's a way to reference that? *ponders* Lajmmoore (talk) 21:49, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

GA review

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Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:Jilly Cooper/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Lajmmoore (talk · contribs) 09:54, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: UndercoverClassicist (talk · contribs) 12:25, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]


I'll take a look at this. UndercoverClassicist T·C 12:25, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Images are appropriately licensed.

Turning to the main body:

  • The lead seems extremely sparse given the length of the body: per MOS:LEAD, it's meant to be able to stand alone as a condensed but adequate distillation of the whole article. I'm not sure that's really the case here. A common rule of thumb is that each paragraph of the body ought to end up as about a sentence in the lead.
  • As with her non-fiction works, Cooper drew heavily on her own point of view and experiences has a CN tag, and reading the source I'm inclined to agree: that article does discuss how her house is the model for Campbell-Black's, but doesn't make a general statement of the kind we have here.
  • We have another CN tag on or classical music. These aspects are contrasted with details of the characters' domestic lives, which are often far from glamorous. Reading the source cited for the next bit, there's a CLOP problem: the Independent has The books are famous for relying heavily on stories of sexual infidelity, betrayal, melodramatic clashes, and economic anxiety set against a backdrop of elite society, including the showjumping and polo crowd., versus Wikipedia's The stories heavily feature sexual infidelity and general betrayal, melodramatic misunderstandings and emotions, money worries and domestic upheavals [and earlier] set in a glamorous and wealthy milieu, such as show jumping. Earwig flags quite a few sources for potential copyvio, but so far everything else I'm seeing is simply (justifiable and correct) re-use of the same tributes after Cooper's death.

Other smaller points:

  • the Godolphin School: I only know this from reviewing Dorothy L. Sayers, but the school in Salisbury calls itself simply "Godolphin School", unlike its sister school in London. It looks as though Moorfield similarly doesn't use the "the".
  • When using "née", use {{nee}} so that unfamiliar readers get an explanation (there's a MoS rule in there somewhere).
  • in Ilkley, Yorkshire and in Surrey: these are two places, so comma after Yorkshire (MOS:GEOCOMMA)
  • After unsuccessfully trying to begin a career in the British national press, aged 20, Cooper became: this could be clearer: was she 20 when she unsuccessfully tried to begin her career, or when she took the local news job?
  • Her break came with a chance meeting at a dinner party when the then editor of The Sunday Times Magazine, Godfrey Smith,: I don't think we need the then here -- nobody's going to assume he's been in post for 65-odd years.
  • Per our article, I think "Rutshire Chronicles" should have a "The" in front of it.
  • I notice that we have lots of reviews for How To Survive Work and Wedlock, but they're all from local papers -- did it get any traction in the national press?
  • The work was compared to Nancy Mitford and Barbara Cartland.: we need that of or similar (unless reviewers suggested that the book had similarities to the women -- a long affair with a French statesman?)
  • writer Juno Dawson described how her obsession with the "ultra-glam" covers of these romances as a child gave her a sense that she was not "very good at being a boy: I know we don't want to draw unnecessary attention to someone's transgender status, but here I think it needs to be clarified that Dawson is a transgender woman and was therefore expected to be rather better than she was at being a boy.

Scanning the biblio before I started, I noticed a few things that you might want to look at. Most are not strictly required for GA, but taken together I think they represent a fairly straightforward chance to push the "polish" of the article upwards:

  • Note 3 has the author name in all caps.
  • fixed
  • Note 7 uses |pp= for a non-numbered page: you can use |at= instead to format it more neatly.
  • I'm probably being dense but I can't work out what to change
  • Notes 17, 18, 52, 77, 100 and 103 have a hyphen where an endash is needed (more an FAC thing than a GA one, but old habits die hard, and I imagine it'll be easy enough to fix).
  • done
  • Note 39 has neither a link nor a page number: did you consult it in print or online? One of the two would be useful.
  • done
  • Notes 45 and 46 seem to be the same newspaper, but have different names.
  • merged
  • Note 75: "Book Review" should not be in all caps.
  • fixed
  • Note 78: title should be in title case.
  • I'm sorry I'm not sure what that means
  • Noes 81 and 82 are the same: you could use a ref name to collapse them together. Ditto 74, 85, 88, 96.
  • Note 105 clearly has the wrong author name (if you want to credit the staff, use |author= rather than |last= and |first=).
  • Note 114 is a bare url: there are good reasons to avoid these. Other links to Cooper's website are formatted more fully.
  • Generally, there are a lot of citations to local news, and of course to Cooper's own works and website. These aren't necessarily a problem, but it will be worth thinking about whether they can bear the weight placed upon them (thinking of WP:DUEWEIGHT as well as WP:V).
  • I don't know where time went the last fortnight, but I'm looking at this now and hope to have everything addressed by the end of the weekend Lajmmoore (talk)
I've looked at the first 7 in the references section, will pick this up tomorrow Lajmmoore (talk) 22:19, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]