18 Perilous Facts You Should Probably Know About "A Series Of Unfortunate Events"
Just in time for Netflix’s new series…
OK, so everyone probably knows this, but we need to get it out of the way: Lemony Snicket isn't a real person. The author's name is actually Daniel Handler.
And Handler's pen name has a slightly bizarre origin story.
When researching for his first novel, The Basic Eight, Handler contacted a right-wing religious organisation looking for information. He didn't want them to keep his name on their mailing list so, when asked for his name, he spontaneously said "Lemony Snicket".
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The series' thirteen books have sold over 65 million copies and have been translated into more than 40 different languages.
Those languages include Finnish, Indonesian, Japanese, Greek, and Czech.
Handler wasn't originally thrilled by the idea of writing books for children.
He was approached by an editor at HarperCollins in 1997, who had met him previously and was looking for new and exciting children's authors. When she first approached him about writing for children, he straight up said no.
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