People like Catherine Alliott

Chick lit is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at younger women. Widely used in the 1990s and 2000s, the term has fallen out of fashion with publishers while writers and critics have rejected its inherent sexism. Novels identified as chick lit typically address romantic relationships, female friendships, and workplace struggles in humorous and lighthearted ways. The typical protagonists are urban, heterosexual women in their late twenties and early thirties: they represented an evolution of the traditional romantic heroine in their assertiveness, financial independence and enthusiasm for conspicuous consumption.

The format developed through the early 1990s on both sides of the Atlantic with books such as Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale (1992, US) and Catherine Alliott's The Old Girl Network (1994, UK). Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary (1996, UK), wildly popular globally, is the "ur text" of chick lit, while Candace Bushnell's (US) 1997 novel Sex and the City has huge ongoing cultural influence. By the late 1990s, chick lit titles regularly topped bestseller lists, and many imprints were created devoted entirely to chick lit. By the mid-2000s, commentators noted that the chick lit market was increasingly saturated, and by the early 2010s, publishers had largely abandoned the category. The term "chick lit" maintains an afterlife as a popular category for readers and amateur writers on the Internet.