Bridget Jones's Diary is a novel by the English novelist Helen Fielding, first published in 1996. The book is penned as a diary kept by a young, lonely Englishwoman. She puts all sorts of things in there, from the number of cigarettes she smokes to her personal thoughts on loneliness and dating. Bridget keeps trying to get herself into a relationship, but she never succeeds. But things are like that until a certain point.