WikiBooks: A Series of Unfortunate Events

by Wikimedia Foundation

A Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of children's novels (or novellas) by Lemony Snicket (the nom de plume of American author Daniel Handler) which follows the turbulent lives of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire after their parents' death in an arsonous house fire. The children are placed in the custody of their distant cousin Count Olaf, who begins to abuse them and openly plots to embezzle their inheritance. After the Baudelaires are removed from his care by their parents' estate executor, Arthur Poe, Olaf begins to doggedly hunt the children down, bringing about the serial slaughter and holocaust of a multitude of characters.

The entire series is actively narrated by Snicket, who makes numerous references to his mysterious, deceased love interest, Beatrice. Both Snicket and Beatrice play roles in the story along with Snicket's family members, all of whom are part of an overarching conspiracy known to the children only as "V.F.D."

Since the release of the first novel, The Bad Beginning, in September 1999, the books have gained significant popularity, critical acclaim, and commercial success worldwide, spawning a film, video game, and assorted merchandise. The thirteen books in the series (or "tridecalogy") have collectively sold more than 60 million copies and have been translated into 41 languages.

Nook

First published February 6, 2011

About the author

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. It is organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based. It operates several online collaborative wiki projects including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Incubator, Meta-Wiki and owns the now-defunct Nupedia. Its flagship project, Wikipedia, ranks in the top-ten most-visited websites worldwide. The creation of the foundation was officially announced on June 20, 2003, by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who had been operating Wikipedia under the aegis of his company Bomis.

The Wikimedia Foundation falls under section 501(c) of the US Internal Revenue Code as a public charity. Its National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) code is C60 (Adult, Continuing Education). The foundation's by-laws declare a statement of purpose of collecting and developing educational content and to disseminate it effectively and globally.
The Wikimedia Foundation's stated goal is to develop and maintain open content, wiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge. This is possible thanks to its Terms of Use (updated and approved on June 2009, to adopt CC-BY-SA license).

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