SOURCE: A review of Bridget Jones's Diary, in Personnel Psychology, Vol. 52, No. 2, Summer, 1999, pp. 485-89.

In the following review, Dick notes that Bridget Jones's Diary is a precursor of other contemporary works about single women.

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that borrowing the plot of a great classic and loosely applying it in a different context will inevitably result in comparisons being made between the two. It is also usual, in such cases, that the borrower is not the one who benefits from such a comparison.

Bridget Jones's Diary, based very loosely on Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice, is concerned with a year in the life of its heroine, a thirtysomething “singleton” who is a graduate living in London and, for part of the year, working for a publishing company. The main concern of the heroine is attempting to rid herself of her “singleton” status and, in...