Jeremy Cooper is a British writer and art historian. He is known for his fiction and for his studies of nineteenth-century design. His works include the novel Ash before Oak (2019), which won the first Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize in 2018, and the novel Brian (2023).
Jeremy Cooper was born in Dorset in 1946 and later settled in Somerset. He studied the history of art at Cambridge and began his career at Sotheby’s, where he catalogued nineteenth-century sculpture and furniture.
“I began to write as a way of securing in my mind information about the 19th-century sculpture and furniture I was cataloguing at Sotheby’s,” he recalled. After leaving Sotheby’s, he worked as Mohamed Al-Fayed’s private art consultant before opening his own gallery in Bloomsbury.
In the late 1970s, he appeared in the first twenty-four episodes of the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow and later co-presented Radio 4’s The Week’s Antiques. He also contributed articles to The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph. His early non-fiction included Victorian and Edwardian Decor: From the Gothic Revival to Art Nouveau, which became a standard reference work. In the 1990s, he wrote on young British artists and later produced The World Exists to Be Put on a Postcard, the British Museum’s catalogue of artists’ postcards (2019).
Cooper’s fiction began with Ruth (1986), inspired by his friendship with the painter Jane Urquhart. Other novels followed, including Us (1990), The Folded Lie (1998) and Kath Trevelyan (2007).
He recalled, “In 1984, I ditched my literary agent Curtis Brown, as they strongly advised me against writing fiction, and since then I’ve handled all my work myself.” His breakthrough as a novelist came with Ash before Oak (2019), described as a diary of rural life and a portrait of depression.
His recent work has garnered widespread attention. Bolt from the Blue (2021) told the story of a mother and daughter through years of letters. Brian (2023) follows a lonely council clerk who finds solace in cinema.
The New Yorker quoted the National Book Award-winning writer Sigrid Nunez as saying, “I can think of no finer exploration of what can happen when a person is fully open and attentive to art.”
Jeremy Cooper lives alone in Somerset, where he writes daily at a large ash desk overlooking an orchard and meadow. He does not use a mobile phone or television.
Jeremy Cooper was born in Dorset in 1946 and later settled in Somerset. He studied the history of art at Cambridge and began his career at Sotheby’s, where he catalogued nineteenth-century sculpture and furniture.
“I began to write as a way of securing in my mind information about the 19th-century sculpture and furniture I was cataloguing at Sotheby’s,” he recalled. After leaving Sotheby’s, he worked as Mohamed Al-Fayed’s private art consultant before opening his own gallery in Bloomsbury.
In the late 1970s, he appeared in the first twenty-four episodes of the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow and later co-presented Radio 4’s The Week’s Antiques. He also contributed articles to The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph. His early non-fiction included Victorian and Edwardian Decor: From the Gothic Revival to Art Nouveau, which became a standard reference work. In the 1990s, he wrote on young British artists and later produced The World Exists to Be Put on a Postcard, the British Museum’s catalogue of artists’ postcards (2019).
Cooper’s fiction began with Ruth (1986), inspired by his friendship with the painter Jane Urquhart. Other novels followed, including Us (1990), The Folded Lie (1998) and Kath Trevelyan (2007).
He recalled, “In 1984, I ditched my literary agent Curtis Brown, as they strongly advised me against writing fiction, and since then I’ve handled all my work myself.” His breakthrough as a novelist came with Ash before Oak (2019), described as a diary of rural life and a portrait of depression.
His recent work has garnered widespread attention. Bolt from the Blue (2021) told the story of a mother and daughter through years of letters. Brian (2023) follows a lonely council clerk who finds solace in cinema.
The New Yorker quoted the National Book Award-winning writer Sigrid Nunez as saying, “I can think of no finer exploration of what can happen when a person is fully open and attentive to art.”
Jeremy Cooper lives alone in Somerset, where he writes daily at a large ash desk overlooking an orchard and meadow. He does not use a mobile phone or television.
years of life: 1946 – present
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