May 26, 2006

A Generational Divide Over Chick Lit

By SUZANNE FERRISS and MALLORY YOUNG

When we decided to put together a book of essays on chick lit, we saw ourselves as simply filling a literary and scholarly niche. No one had yet given serious consideration to the wildly popular body of literature — aimed largely at single, professional women in their 20s and 30s — spawned by the success of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, a novel first published in England in 1996.

We issued personal invitations to scholars of women's literature and