Bridget Jones is a fictional character created by English writer Helen Fielding.

Fielding first published Bridget Jones' stories in the form of a diary in English newspaper columns in The Independent and later The Daily Telegraph.

They chronicled the life of Bridget Jones, a thirtysomething singleton woman living in London, surrounded by a 'surrogate family' of friends as she tries to make sense of life and love in the 1990s. Often hysterically funny, the column accurately lampooned the obsessions of women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan and wider societal trends in Britain at the time.

Bridget Jones's Diary

These columns were made into a novel in 1996, Bridget Jones's Diary, and turned into a movie of the same name in 2001, directed by Sharon Maguire.

The movie starred Renée Zellweger as Bridget. Before the film came out a considerable amount of controversy surrounded the casting of the American Zellweger as what some saw as a quintessentially British heroine: however, her performance is widely considered to be of a high standard.

The director of the film, Sharon Maguire, is one of Fielding's friends who the character of "Shazzer" was reportedly based on.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

A sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, followed in 1999.

A movie with the same title has been released in 2004.