Jonathan Cape has acquired the new Bridget Jones novel by Helen Fielding. The novel explores a different phase in Bridget’s life and will be published in Autumn 2013. The first two Bridget Jones novels were huge international bestsellers, published in forty countries and selling over 15 million copies worldwide.
Richard Cable, Managing Director of Vintage Publishing (a Random House Group Company), acquired UK and Commonwealth rights on sole submission from Gillon Aitken of Aitken Alexander Associates. Jonathan Cape will publish in Autumn 2013. Vintage will publish the novel in paperback in 2014.
Dan Franklin, Publisher of 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.’
Helen Fielding said: ‘I'm thrilled to be published by Jonathan Cape but want to register my huge appreciation of Bridget's original publisher, Picador, and the success they made of the two early Bridget Jones novels. The new novel is set in present-day London, with an entirely new scenario for Bridget. If people laugh as much reading it as I am while writing it then we'll all be very happy.’
HELEN FIELDING
Bridget Jones's Diary started life as a weekly column in the Independentin 1995 and charted the life of a thirty-something singleton in London in the 1990s. The column was subsequently adapted into a novel and published in 1997, becoming a huge international bestseller. As was its sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, published in 1999. The novels were adapted for the big screen in 2001 and 2004, starring Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. Helen Fielding lives in London.