Jilly Cooper's Typewriter 'Monica 2' Could Fetch £15,000 at Christie's

A manual typewriter that Jilly Cooper used to write her Rutshire chronicles carries a guide price of £10,000 to £15,000 at Christie's on 9 December. The late author called the machine Monica 2.

The Olivetti Underwood Lettera 32, which dates from around 1964, forms part of a live auction named Love and Lust: A Literary Guide. The sale gathers roughly 30 books, manuscripts, letters and cultural artefacts on romance, desire and storytelling across the centuries. Christie's announced the inclusion as the new series of Rivals, the Disney+ adaptation of Cooper's best-known novel, returns to screens. The show, set in the fictional Rutshire against the backdrop of the Cotswolds, won awards for its mix of television-industry intrigue and racy ensemble drama.

What do we know about Monica 2?

Christie's located the machine in Cooper's office at The Chantry, her home in Bisley, Gloucestershire, after her death in October last year at the age of 88. An inquest concluded she suffered a fatal head injury in a fall at home; family found her on 4 October 2025.

Cooper owned several typewriters, but Monica 2 took pride of place. In interviews she referred to her machine simply as "Monica" — in reality a succession of trusted machines. Monica 2 came before another Monica, bought at the Conservative party conference in 1982. When that machine went away for servicing by Colin, the only repairer Cooper trusted, Monica 2 was brought in from the gazebo to return to active duty.

Typewriters were central to her method. She typed everything on them: journalism for the Sunday Times and Daily Mail alongside her hit novels. She built drafts layer upon layer, typing new passages and stapling them directly over earlier versions before assistants retyped the whole. She worked in several spots around The Chantry — the upstairs office, her late husband Leo's "War Room", the terrace where she claimed to work topless in the sun, and the gazebo, where Monica 2 was used to write her 2010 Rutshire racing novel, Jump!

In an early interview, Cooper credited the machine with keeping her at work during a county-wide blackout. "She came into her own … when the whole of Gloucestershire had a power cut and I was typing away in the gazebo, oblivious, while everyone back in the house was effing and blinding and stumbling around in the darkness," Cooper said. "Monica's wonderful. I've got a pair of scissors attached to her now so that I can do my own cutting and pasting."

What does the sale say about her literary standing?

Thais Hitchins, head of sales at Christie's, framed the lot as a bridge between canonic literature and mass-market fiction. "Few modern writers are so deeply associated with the typewriter than the late Dame Jilly Cooper," Hitchins said. "To bring her beloved Monica 2 typewriter to auction alongside works associated with Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Lady Hamilton and great chroniclers of love, longing and seduction creates a fascinating dialogue between literary history and popular culture. Few objects evoke the act of storytelling so directly, and few could be more fitting for a sale celebrating the greatest expressions of love and lust."

The guide price is an estimate, not a guarantee; celebrity artefacts can overshoot or undersell. Still, with Rivals back on Disney+ and Cooper's archive newly on the market, 9 December will offer a first public test of how the trade values the physical tools of one of Britain's bestselling novelists.