Bridget Jones is to return to bookstores with the newest addition to the popular series. The book to be released in October, Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diary, follows the character’s “somewhat bumpy journey into motherhood” as she enters her 40s.

Bridget Jones will return to the theatres and bookstores with a baby. Photo: Universal Pictures

In the book, Jones becomes pregnant, but the joy of future motherhood is overshadowed by the “terribly awkward” question of ‘who is the father?’

The book is to be released a month after the movie, carrying the same name, premiers at the cinemas. The movie version of Bridget Jones’s adventures will be the third addition to the saga, following the wildly popular movies Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

The book, however, will be the fourth instalment of the series. The previous book, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, was published in 2013.

"At heart Bridget Jones is about the gap between how we all feel we’re expected to be and how we actually are and – as Bridget discovers with her somewhat bumpy pregnancy - how we expect life to turn out and how it actually does. I’m excited to see Bridget’s world on the big screen again," the author Helen Fielding said.

Bridget Jones first appeared in a column in The Independent newspaper in 1995, and the book version of the fictional diaries followed the columns a year after. The first Bridget Jones book became a worldwide bestseller and the movies have grossed a total of $544.5 million (€492m).