Published in 1999, The Bad Beginning, a darkly humorous adventure novel for middle-grade readers, chronicles the misadventures of three orphaned children whose distant cousin adopts them as part of a plan to steal their huge inheritance. As the first of 13 books in the bestselling A Series of Unfortunate Events, the novel is written by Daniel Handler under the pen name Lemony Snicket, who’s also a character in the story. The books have sold 60 million copies in 41 languages and have been adapted for film and television.

Author Handler published a related four-book series, All the Wrong Questions, in which Lemony Snicket details his own unusual childhood. Handler’s other works include companion books for the Lemony Snicket series, eight novels for adults, several screenplays, and recordings of his compositions for accordion.

Content Warning: The story includes episodes of cruelty to children, including verbal abuse, threats, kidnaping, and violence.

The book contains illustrations by Brett Helquist. Its 2015 eBook version forms the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

Mr. and Mrs. Baudelaire, a wealthy couple, die suddenly when their mansion burns down. Their children—Violet, 14, a budding inventor; Klaus, 12, a student of biology; and Sunny, a gurgling infant who likes to shriek and bite—are sent by the family’s banker, Mr. Poe, to live with a distant relative, the stage performer Count Olaf. His house is dark and filthy, and he treats them cruelly, making them do heavy chores, slapping them when they protest, and allowing only a single bedroom and bed for all three children.

The children visit Mr. Poe at his office and describe their awful situation, but Poe says that Count Olaf, as their legal guardian, may do as he sees fit. The only respite for the children is provided by a neighbor, Justice Strauss, who invites them to visit her house and its big library filled with books. Violet borrows volumes on engineering, Klaus reads tomes on wolves, and Sunny selects a book with pictures of teeth. The reading distracts them from their unhappy life.

Count Olaf announces that the children will participate in a stage play that his troupe will perform. In it, the character he portrays will marry a young girl. The girl will be played by Violet. She and Klaus wonder what Olaf is planning. They guess that he has a scheme to steal their inheritance, so they return to Strauss’s library and look up inheritance law. Klaus also reads about marital law, and he realizes that the stage play is a ruse: Through the vagaries of nuptial law, Violet will actually become the Count’s legal wife.

Klaus confronts Olaf with this information. In retaliation, Olaf places Sunny in a cage that dangles from the top of the house’s tower room; he threatens to kill her unless Violet agrees to marry him. She gives in and accepts the deal.

That night, Violet devises a grappling hook out of a curtain rod and some wire. To this she attaches torn strips of curtain tied together, then throws the hook up onto the tower and climbs the curtain rope, hoping to rescue Sunny. At the top, she’s captured by the Count’s assistant, a man with hooks for hands, who locks her and her brother into the tower until showtime.

At the theatre, Violet is dressed as the bride, Klaus dons the costume of a sailor, and Justice Strauss makes an appearance as the judge who’ll officiate at the wedding. Excited to be onstage, and innocent of the Count’s real intent, she obligingly recites the wedding-vow passage from her law book. Both the Count and Violet say “I do” and sign the marriage certificate.

Olaf declares to the audience that the play is done and that he has just officially married Violet in real life. As her new husband, he’ll retrieve the Baudelaire fortune in the morning. The audience is stunned, and Mr. Poe protests, but Olaf insists that, as her guardian, he can approve of Violet's marriage, even if that marriage is to himself. Justice Strauss reluctantly concurs.

Violet retorts that she signed the marriage paper with her left hand, but she’s right-handed, so her signature breaks the rule that it must be written in a bride’s “own hand.” Strauss agrees, and Mr. Poe tries to arrest the Count, but someone switches off the lights, and, in the ensuing mayhem, the Count and his accomplices escape.

Justice Strauss offers to adopt the Baudelaire children, but Mr. Poe insists that the terms of the Baudelaire will dictate that they must be raised by a relative. The children say a sad goodbye to Strauss; they’re escorted away in Mr. Poe's car.