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Dame Jilly was a long-standing friend of the Queen and based her fictional seducer and show-jumping lothario Rupert Campbell-Black partly on her ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles.
Dame Jilly's first novel in the Rutshire series, Riders, was published in 1985.
It made the BBC list of 100 important English language novels in the love, sex and romance selection alongside Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice.
Her agent Felicity Blunt paid tribute at the time her death was announced, saying Dame Jilly had "defined culture, writing and conversation since she was first published over 50 years ago".
She said: "You wouldn't expect books categorised as bonkbusters to have so emphatically stood the test of time but Jilly wrote with acuity and insight about all things – class, sex, marriage, rivalry, grief and fertility."