Helen Fielding, the author of Bridget Jones’s Diary, started it all. What began as a column in the Independent in the late 1990s, about a woman pondering the size of her backside, how many fags she shouldn’t be puffing, how many Chardonnays she’s quaffing and why she can’t keep a boyfriend, has expanded into a literary movement. Publishers ignore it at their financial peril for the simple fact that chick lit sells hundreds of thousands of books a year. Bridget Jones has become a household name, two Hollywood films have been made about her, and the book sat on the Times bestseller list for two years. Helen Fielding hit a nerve.

These novels, almost always written by women in their early 30s, for women in their early 30s are about… women in their early 30s. They tend towards a breezy, chatty, self-deprecating style where the heroine’s self doubt about career progression, success in love, looks and money is a crucial, and in some cases, endearing quality. It is the does-my-bum-look-big-in-this, why-is-my-boyfriend-horrid, let’s-go-for-cocktails-and-forget-our-woes style of fiction. Even Mills & Boon has jumped on the chick lit trend and publish books aimed at the single, 30-something working girl.

Chick lit is different from the ‘sex and shopping’ bonkbusters of the 1970s and 80s, typified by authors such as Jackie Collins and Shirley Conran. Then, rampant escapist consumerism meant that Amazonian, calculating, women plotted for everything they could get – from the Versace clothes to the Lear Jet, in exotic locations such as Bel Air or Mayfair.

What a chick lit heroine really wants to do is fall in love, settle down, get married and move from her one-bed flat in a large city to the suburbs. A chick lit heroine is not to be confused with a guilt-free sexual predator such as Samantha from the TV series Sex and the City, a more calculating successor to the self-doubting Bridget Joneses. Samantha bears much more of a resemblance to her 70s sisters. Maybe we have come full circle.

Some of the best chick lit is written by Marian Keyes, India Knight, Jane Green, Wendy Holden and Plum Sykes.