Bridget Jones is a
franchise based on the fictional character with the same name, Bridget Jones. British writer
Helen Fielding started her
Bridget Jones's Diary column in
The Independent in 1995, while chronicling the life of Bridget Jones as a thirtysomething single woman in
London as she tries to make sense of life and love with the help of a surrogate "
urban family" of friends in the 1990s. The column
lampooned the obsession of women with
women's magazines such as
Cosmopolitan and wider social trends in Britain at the time. Helen Fielding published the novelisation of the column in 1996, followed by a sequel in 1999 called
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Both novels were adapted for the big screen in 2001 and 2004, starring
Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones, and
Hugh Grant and
Colin Firth as the men in her life: Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy. After Fielding had ceased to work for
The Daily Telegraph in late 1998, the feature began again in
The Independent on 4 August 2005 and finished in June 2006. Helen Fielding released a third novel in 2013,
"Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy", which is set 18 years later.