Lots of fun with Jane Austen's novels is had in Helen Fielding's two volumes of Bridget Jones's Diary. The man of Bridget's dreams, as is now well known, is called Mark Darcy. She and Mark are introduced at a New Year's Day Turkey Curry Buffet, arranged by friends of Bridget's parents. When she first meets him, Mark (a ‘top human rights lawyer’) is standing aloof, scrutinising the contents of their bookshelves. Bridget, prejudiced against Darcy from the first, thinks him a snob, and her new boyfriend, the rake, Daniel, confirms this opinion when he tells her that he's known Mark since Cambridge and he's a nerdish old maid. Bridget and Mark continue to bump into each other at parties and cross swords, in a series of conversations, though Bridget gradually comes to see that Mark might really care for her. When Darcy goes to great lengths to rescue the family from the financial disaster that Bridget's insufferable mother's romantic escapade has plunged them into, she is ready to fall into his arms – or rather to climb the stairs to his bedroom.