Fictional and FABULOUS

Check out literature's leading ladies

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British fiction teems with radiant female characters - and we love a wicked villain as much as a genuine hero. All these characters started out in novels, but have now appeared in films and TV series. In fact, they're pretty much household names.

Historic hero

She may be more than 200 years old, but Elizabeth Bennet, hero of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, is a fictional heroine who is loved and admired today as much as she’s ever been. Loved because she’s confident, clever and sure to make you laugh. Admired because she’s independent, honest and true to herself. Her family’s precarious situation means she needs to marry ‘well’ – but it’s love she really wants. So she turns down both the boring but secure Mr Collins and (initially anyway) the supremely eligible Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy. And remember Elizabeth’s splendidly defiant showdown with the abominable Lady Catherine de Bourgh? It makes you want to cheer!

Comic genius

Bridget Jones, an accident-prone everywoman, rose to fame in a newspaper column in the mid-1990s and subsequently came to life in