Helen Fielding to write new Bridget Jones novel

Bridget Jones's Diary, the book that launched a thousand chick-lit imitators, will be brought back for a third time.

by: Felicity Capon

Bridget Jones and her haphazard love life are making a return to our bookshelves, 17 years after first being published. Helen Fielding’s new work has been acquired by publisher Jonathan Cape and the novel is due to be published in Autumn 2013.


No title has yet been released for the new novel, although it is reported to be set in contemporary London and will explore “a different phase in Bridget’s life”.

Dan Franklin, a publisher at Jonathan Cape, said: "Great comic writers are as rare as hen’s teeth. Helen is one of a very select band who have created a character, Bridget, of whom the very thought makes you smile. Like millions of others, I can’t wait to see what’s happened to her."

The first two Bridget Jones novels, Bridget Jones’s Diary, published in 1996 and The Edge of Reason, published in 1999, were international bestsellers. They have been published in over 40 countries and together have sold over 15 million copies worldwide, with help from two successful film adaptations, released in 2002 and 2004.

Earlier this year Fielding told the Telegraph she would not be attempting any 50 Shades of Grey style sex scenes. “If ever I wrote a sex scene, I would send it to friends for feedback – different passages to different friends – and, honestly, I’d never hear the end of it,” she said. “I would always be hearing little references to it slipped into conversation – how embarrassing – so now I just don’t do it.”

from: Telegraph