Jilly Cooper, the grande dame of English romance novels who started as a newspaper columnist and went on to sell millions of copies of her “Rutshire Chronicles” series, set in the upper echelons of British society, died Sunday. She was 88. She died after a fall, according to a statement from her publisher, Curtis Brown. In the late 1960s and 1970s, before publishing the Rutshire novels, Cooper wrote several other books, including less explicit romance novels and various nonfiction books. Her first book, “How to Stay Married,” came out in 1969, when Cooper had been married for only seven years.