ABSTRACT
In 1995, the British newspaper the Independent ran a then-anonymous column entitled Bridget Jones’s Diary. The column, in a freshly ironic and satirical manner, chronicled the daily vicissitudes of a thirty-something London ‘singleton’. In 1996, Helen Fielding, the column’s author, emerged with a novel by the same name, a novel that continued to document the title character’s obsession with her vices: chocolate, cigarettes, Chardonnay and unsuitable suitors. After the novel’s success, the columns were given a new home at the Daily Telegraph in 1997; the original novel was translated into thirty-three languages; and a successful sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, emerged in 1999. Both books were eventually translated into film as well, the original novel being adapted for release in 2001 and the sequel in 2004. The Bridget Jones phenomenon did not stop there, however. The success of Fielding’s work is said to have spawned the genre of ‘chick-lit’ in both Britain and America: countless first-person novels penned by countless first-time female novelists began to hit the shelves.
