Editing Lemony Snicket (section)

==Characterization==
{{In-universe|section|date=April 2020}}
Within ''A Series of Unfortunate Events'', the narrator Lemony Snicket is given his own backstory. He is said to have come from a family of three children. His brother Jacques (who was murdered in ''[[The Vile Village]]'') and sister Kit were [[Volunteer Fire Department (A Series Of Unfortunate Events)|V.F.D.]] members and friends of the Baudelaire parents. Both Jacques and Kit appear as supporting characters in the books. He also knew [[Count Olaf]] in his early life, as the two attended school together. As a child, he was kidnapped and inducted as a "[[wikt:neophyte#Noun|neophyte]]" into V.F.D., where he was trained in [[rhetoric]] and sent on seemingly pointless missions, while all connections were severed from his former life, apart from his siblings Jacques and Kit (who were also kidnapped and inducted). Consequently, Snicket attended a V.F.D.-run boarding school in his youth with several other characters from the series. He received later tuition at a V.F.D. headquarters in the Mortmain Mountains and was employed by a newspaper called ''The Daily Punctilio'' after graduation as an [[obituary]] spell-checker and theater critic.

As a character, Snicket is a harried, troubled writer and photographer who is [[False accusation|falsely accused]] of various felonies and continuously hunted by the police and his enemies, the fire-starting side of the secret organization V.F.D. (Volunteer Fire Department). In the organization, he met and fell in love with an associate named [[Beatrice Baudelaire|Beatrice]], to whom he got engaged. He was falsely accused of murder and arson. Eventually, the fallacies grew so much that ''The Daily Punctilio'' reported his death. Beatrice later moved on and married [[Bertrand Baudelaire]], becoming the mother of [[Violet Baudelaire|Violet]], [[Klaus Baudelaire|Klaus]], and [[Sunny Baudelaire]], the protagonists of ''A Series of Unfortunate Events''. Fourteen years thereafter, Beatrice and Bertrand were supposedly murdered in a house fire, leaving the Baudelaire children orphaned and then pursued by Snicket's former associate, [[Count Olaf]]. Snicket feels indebted to his former fiancée and embarks on a quest to chronicle the lives of the Baudelaire children until they become old enough to face the troubles of the world on their own.{{quote box|A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.|– Lemony Snicket
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Lemony Snicket has charged himself with the task of researching and documenting the story of the Baudelaire orphans for "many personal and legal reasons". He traces their movements and collects evidence relating to their adventures. Though he is never specified to have met the children in the book series, in the Netflix [[A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV series)#Season 3 (2019)|adaptation]] of ''The Penultimate Peril'' he is confirmed as the taxi driver trying to take the children away from the hotel.

As the series progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Snicket had known the Baudelaire orphans' parents well through their connections to V.F.D. However, as mentioned in ''[[The Hostile Hospital]]'' and ''[[The End (novel)|The End]]'', despite all of Lemony's research and hard work, he still does not know the current location, position or status of the Baudelaire children. Additionally, it is unclear if he ever met them in the books.

Snicket is frequently disparaging of himself; he has described himself as a [[cowardice|coward]], and at various points in his novels comments that he would not have been as brave as the Baudelaire children had he been in their situation. He also confesses that he has done things that were not noble, such as the original theft of the sugar bowl from [[Esmé Squalor]]. He implied he had a part in the murder of Count Olaf's parents, and that Beatrice was involved as well.

In the narration of the books, Snicket describes doing many unusual things in his free time, including hiding all traces of his actions, locating new hiding places, considering suspicious dishes, and researching the perilous lives of the Baudelaire children. He claims to often write himself citations for bravery in an attempt to cheer himself up, but these attempts are always in vain.
[[File:Handlertheend.PNG|thumb|Daniel Handler in 2006]]