A Series of Unfortunate Events

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**Title** **A Series of Unfortunate Events**
Cover art of the first book in the series,The Bad Beginning
Author	Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Children's, Black comedy, steampunk, absurdist fiction
Publisher	HarperCollins
Released	30 September 1999

A Series of Unfortunate Events is a children's book series, written by Daniel Handler under the pseudonym of Lemony Snicket, and illustrated by Brett Helquist. The first book in the series was The Bad Beginning, released on September 30, 1999, by HarperCollins Children's Books. The thirteenth and final book, The End, was released on Friday, October 13, 2006.

A film version based on the first three books in the series, The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window, was released on December 17, 2004, as Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. On November 10, 2004, before the movie was released, a video game of the same name was released for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, Game Boy Advance and PC.

1 History
2 General storyline
3 Recurring themes and concepts
4 Genre
5 Allusions
- 5.1 People
- 5.2 Literary works
6 Setting
7 Distribution
8 Awards
9 References
10 External links

[edit] History

Daniel Handler has said in an interview with The A.V. Club that he decided to write a children's story when he was trying to find a publisher for his first novel, The Basic Eight.^[1] One of the publishers said that they would not publish the book, but they were interested in him writing a story for children. Handler thought it was a terrible idea, but decided to meet with the publisher in a bar later anyway.

He explained his idea for a "Gothic novel about children growing up through terrible things" and the publisher liked it, to Handler's surprise.

Handler wrote the book, which the publisher, Harper Collins liked, and that book became The Bad Beginning, the first in A Series of Unfortunate Events.

[edit] General storyline

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The series follows the unlucky lives of three siblings, Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire, after their parents were killed in a fire at their family mansion. In The Bad Beginning, they briefly live with a friend of their parents, Mr. Poe, before being sent to live with Count Olaf who is supposedly either the siblings' third cousin four times removed, or their fourth cousin three times removed. The siblings discover quickly that Olaf has a tattoo of an eye on his left ankle, and more importantly, that he is a most unpleasant, evil man determined to get his hands on the Baudelaire fortune that awaits Violet when she turns eighteen. In the next six books, Olaf follows the children wherever they go in a disguise so he can get closer to the orphans and steal their fortune. The orphans routinely try to get help from Mr. Poe, the banker with whom the Baudelaires briefly lived, but Poe is always either oblivious to Olaf's danger or unaware that the disguised Olaf is not who he claims to be.

Each of the three siblings has a distinctive skill that helps them during their adventures. Violet is always inventing new things to help them, Klaus is always finding out new information through his research, and Sunny has extremely sharp teeth that can bite almost anything in two. In later books, Sunny learns how to cook, outgrowing her teeth as her primary skill and adding this to her list of abilities, solving problems with both these talents. With her newfound cooking ability, Sunny shifts from being a helpless baby to a young girl and begins to speak in sophisticated single word utterances, a variety of incomplete sentences, and some short word sentences as well. Their meaning is either disguised by being spelled phonetically (e.g., 'surchmi' in The Slippery Slope), through cultural references (Sunny says: 'Matahari', followed by a definition of 'If I stay, I can spy on them and find out.'), or being written in other languages (e.g., Shalom or Sayonara). There are also instances of her using rare words such as "Bildungsroman" to express similar meanings to the word used.

Lemony Snicket, the supposed author of the stories and the pseudonym of Daniel Handler, is actually a character himself on the periphery of the stories. He follows the Baudelaires, researching and recording their exploits. By the last few books in the series, the Baudelaires learn some vague information about him but they only meet him briefly in The Penultimate Peril.

[edit] Recurring themes and concepts

The majority of the books in A Series of Unfortunate Events pick up from the last, finding the three orphans in a new situation, typically not of their making. The location of each book's critical events is usually identified in the book's title. Handler often works the siblings' respective skills into the story line. Violet always has something to invent, Klaus always finds a library to do research in, and in the early books, Sunny always finds something to chew on or, in later books cook, as she begins to grow into her teeth and develops culinary skills.

Lemony Snicket often explains words and analogies in incongruous detail. When describing a word the reader may not be aware of, he always says 'a word which here means...' Despite the general absurdity of the books' storyline, Lemony Snicket continuously maintains that the story is true and that it is his "solemn duty" to record it. Snicket often goes off into humorous asides, discussing his opinions of various matters, or his personal life. The details of his supposed personal life are largely absurd, incomplete and not sufficiently explained. For example, Snicket claims to have been chased by an angry mob for sixteen miles.

Lemony Snicket has a very cynical outlook on life. The blurb of each book tries to convince the reader to read a different book instead, and describes things that might make the reader not want to read the book, at least one of which is always tame and ordinary. For example, from an excerpt of the blurb of The Grim Grotto: "In fact, the horrors they encounter are too numerous to list, and you wouldn't even want me to describe the worst of it, which includes mushrooms, a desperate search for something lost, a mechanical monster, a distressing message from a lost friend, and tap-dancing." Snicket will display a greater aversion for macabre elements than the average reader. Whenever the story is reaching a depressing point, he will beg the reader to stop reading and imagine a happy ending. The blurb is always followed by Snicket's sign-off: "With all due respect, Lemony Snicket."

Snicket translates for the youngest Baudelaire orphan, Sunny, who in the early books can say only words or phrases that make sense to her siblings. This becomes less common as Sunny begins to speak real words, one of her first longer sentences in the series being "I'm not a baby." to her sister Violet in The Slippery Slope. The words she uses are often from another language or a cultural reference. For example, Busheney (Bush cheney) means a most despicable, evil man.

When describing a character whom the Baudelaires have met before, Snicket often describes the character first and does not reveal the name of the character until they have been thoroughly described. He never does this when the disguised Olaf is introduced to the children. Lemony Snicket starts each book with a description of something irrelevant to the story before linking it back to the Baudelaires and their current situation. Snicket often uses alliteration (repeated starting sounds on consecutive words) to name locations throughout the story. He uses this writing technique for the titles of the books (the only exception being the final book, The End).

Cover of an "A Series of Unfortunate Events" themed calendar

Social commentary is a major element in the books, which often comment on the seemingly inescapable follies of human nature. The books consistently present the Baudelaire children as free-thinking and independent, while almost everyone else in the world around them obeys authority and succumbs to mob psychology, peer pressure, ambition, and other social ills. A high account is given to learning: those who are "well-read" are often sympathetic characters, while those who shun knowledge are villains.

The books have strong themes of moral relativism, as the Baudelaires become more confused during the course of the series about the difference between right and wrong, feeling they have done wicked things themselves and struggling with the question of whether the end justifies the means. In the final book, in an allusion to Biblical Original Sin, a snake offers the children a life-saving apple. Evil characters are shown to have sympathetic characteristics and often have led difficult lives. Similarly, good characters' flaws become major problems, usually being "too gentle" to help. Almost every major character in the books have lived a lives as difficult as that of the Baudelaires, especially the villains. The books highlight the inevitability of temptation and moral decision-making, regardless of external situation. This indicates that regardless of one's outside influences, one always has the final choice in whether they will be good or bad. Characters that make brave decisions to fight back and and take charge are almost always "good" and characters that just go along end up as "bad."

Fungi and mushrooms also often appear; the Orphans' Shack, in The Austere Academy contains dripping fungus, and the Mycelium Medusoid is a rather important plot device.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Genre

The books and movie have been classified as 'steampunk',^[2] in that they involve young people struggling against great odds in an anachronistic setting, however, in later books, the addition of the mysterious organization known as V.F.D. have begun to push the story into the new genre of post-steampunk (in the same way that later additions to the cyberpunk genre are now classed as postcyberpunk).

Other modern novels with steampunk elements include Mortal Engines^[3] and the His Dark Materials^[4] trilogy.

Other genres that the series have been described as are absurdist fiction,^[5] because of its strange characters, quirky writing style and improbable storylines, and black comedy,^[6]^[7] because of the mix of humorous and macabre elements.

[edit] Allusions

While the books are marketed primarily to children, they are written with adult readers in mind; the series features references more likely to make sense to adults. Many of the characters' names allude to other fictional works or real people with macabre connections. More obscure literary references abound, perhaps in keeping with the common theme of being 'well-read'.

[edit] People

The Baudelaire orphans are named after Charles Baudelaire, and Sunny and Klaus take their first names from Claus and Sunny von Bülow.^[8]
Uncle Monty warns the children never to let the Virginian Wolfsnake near a typewriter, referencing both Monty Python and Virginia Woolf.
The two triplets that the Baudelaire children befriend are named Isadora and Duncan after Isadora Duncan.
Poe's children, Edgar and Albert, may refer to Edgar Allan Poe^[9]
In the last book of the series, The End, most of the characters on the island are named after characters from ocean- or island-based stories from literature (i.e. Miranda Caliban, named after characters in Shakespeare's The Tempest).^[8]

[edit] Literary works

In The Vile Village, crows roost in the Nevermore Tree, an allusion to The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.
The names that Violet and Klaus take during The Carnivorous Carnival when they are disguised as circus freaks, Beverly and Elliot, are the names of the twin gynecologist brothers that Jeremy Irons played in the movie Dead Ringers. Jeremy Irons also played Claus von Bülow, the person whose name Klaus's is derived from, in the film Reversal Of Fortune.
The character Esmé Squalor is a reference to J. D. Salinger's short story, For Esmé with Love and Squalor. Her husband's first name Jerome is also Salinger's first name.
Sunny suggested "Orlando" during a discussion of the henchperson of indeterminate gender, a reference to Virginia Woolf's Orlando.
In The Wide Window, Hurricane "Herman" is a possible reference to Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick, in keeping with the nautical themes.
In The Ersatz Elevator during an auction, lot 49 (a postage stamp) is skipped. This refers to Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 the title of which refers to the auction lot number of stamps from a secret postal service. Interestingly, The Crying of Lot 49 also features a labryrinthian plot, a search for a secret organization known only by its initials (W.A.S.T.E.), similar to V.F.D.
Characters in The End include names taken from literature relating to the sea, islands, and sea storms, such as Charles Nordhoff's and James Norman Hall's Mutiny on the Bounty (novel), William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. (See also Castaways (A Series of Unfortunate Events)).
In 'The Austere Academy', the name of the school attended by the orphans is Prufrock Preparatory School, a reference to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

[edit] Setting

The books seem to be set in an alternate version of Earth with stylistic similarities to both the 19th century and the 1930s, though with contemporary, and seemingly anachronistic scientific knowledge. One example of this "technological disconnect" is documented in The Hostile Hospital, where the Baudelaire children send a message via morse code on a telegraph, yet in the Last Chance General Store, there is fiber-optic cable for sale. An "advanced computer" appears in The Austere Academy, which, while outdated by current standards, is nonetheless more advanced than the earliest computers. Although the film version sets the Baudelaires' mansion in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, real places rarely appear in the books, although many are mentioned. For example, in The Reptile Room, Uncle Monty and the Baudelaires plan a trip to Peru; there are also references to the fictional nobility of North American regions, specifically the Duchess of Winnipeg and the King of Arizona. A book in Jerome and Esmé Squalor's library was titled Trout, In France They're Out; a reference to the country in Europe.In the first book The Bad Beginning, there is a refrence to the London branch of the Hyrpatological society which the childrens Uncle Monty was involved in.

[edit] Distribution

[edit] Books

UK cover of The Grim Grotto

The series includes thirteen main books as follow:

There are books that accompany the series, such as: The Beatrice Letters, The Blank Book, The Dismal Dinner, Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, The Notorious Notations, The Puzzling Puzzles, and 13 Shocking Secrets You'll Wish You Never Knew About Lemony Snicket. A book of humorous quotes drawn from the series, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid, is to be released in April. Paperback reprints of the full series with restyled covers and a serial supplement entitled The Cornucopian Cavalcade^[10] are to be released, beginning with The Bad Beginning or, Orphans! and The Reptile Room or, Murder!, and continuing later in 2007 with The Wide Window or, Disappearance!.

[edit] Audio

[edit] Audio books

Most of the series of unabridged audio books are read by actor Tim Curry, though Books III-V are read by Handler as Lemony Snicket. The “Dear Reader” blurb is usually read by Handler (as Snicket) at the beginning, although it's missing in The Hostile Hospital. He usually reads the 'To my Kind Editor' blurb about the next book at the end. Starting at 'The Carnivourous Carnival' there is another actor who replaces Handler in reading the two blurbs, although they are skipped entirely in The Grim Grotto. All of the recordings include a loosely related song by The Gothic Archies, a novelty band, featuring lyrics by Handler's Magnetic Fields bandmate Stephin Merritt.

[edit] Album

Cover of the Tragic Treasury, a collection of songs related to A Series of Unfortunate Events

Main article: The Tragic Treasury: Songs from A Series of Unfortunate Events

In October 2006, The Tragic Treasury: Songs from A Series of Unfortunate Events by The Gothic Archies was released. The album is a collection of thirteen songs written and performed by Stephin Merritt, each one originally appearing on one of the corresponding thirteen audiobooks of the series. Two bonus songs are included.

[edit] Film

Main article: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Logo of the film based on the books

A film version, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, based on the first three books, was released on December 17, 2004. It stars Jim Carrey as Count Olaf, Meryl Streep as Aunt Josephine, Billy Connolly as Uncle Monty, Emily Browning as Violet, Liam Aiken as Klaus, Kara & Shelby Hoffman as Sunny, and Jude Law as the voice of Lemony Snicket. The film tie-in editions of the novels feature a variation on the usual reverse-psychology blurb: the blurb takes the form of a message from Count Olaf, listing the good points of the story (such as "a dashing count") but suggesting that it would be much easier and less boring to watch the movie instead.

Considering the success of the movie, the director and some of the lead actors hinted that they are keen on making a sequel, but no one has written a script as of yet. According to director Brad Silberling, the second movie would take its plot from the next few books. Browning has said that further films would have to be produced quickly, as the children do not age much throughout the book series. Violet and Klaus are both said to have a birthday throughout the series, Sunny becomes a toddler, and in Chapter Fourteen, the children have been castaways for exactly a year. All in all, the children can be, at most, two years older than they were in The Bad Beginning. Other plot discrepancies, such as Klaus's glasses breaking in the Miserable Mill (he has glasses in the film, but rarely uses them) may hinder the production of a sequel.

A petition for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events sequel has been signed over by thousands of Lemony Snicket fans. The petition will be sent to Paramount Pictures and other people involved in the making of the first film when enough signatures have been collected.^[11]

The film takes place in and around Boston, Massachusetts: The envelope at the end of the film is addressed to Boston, Mass. Perhaps incidentally, Viacom, Paramount's parent, owned 2 TV stations in Boston at the time of the film's release: CBS affiliate WBZ-TV, and UPN affiliate WSBK-TV (they are now owned by CBS Corporation).