The Bad Beginning 20th Anniversary Gift Edition [1/7/2021]

[gothicarchiesfan]

Moderator Edit: Photographs can be found here.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the series' UK publication, Egmont are releasing a special version of TBB.


The Bad Beginning is the first book in the globally bestselling series A Series of Unfortunate Events. This exclusive gold foiled 20th anniversary hardback gift edition commiserates the fact that this brilliantly funny book has been miserably longed for by every child in the world for the last twenty years.

Perfect for fans of Roald Dahl and Mr Gum, young readers of 8 to 12 will adore the mischievously dark humour. A Series of Unfortunate Events’ has been made into both a blockbuster Hollywood film starring Jim Carey and also a hit Netflix TV series.

Dear reader,

There is nothing to be found in Lemony Snicket’s ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ but misery and despair. You still have time to choose another international best-selling series to read. But if you insist on discovering the unpleasant adventures of the Baudelaire orphans, then proceed with caution…

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are intelligent children. They are charming, and resourceful, and have pleasant facial features. Unfortunately, they are exceptionally unlucky.

In The Bad Beginning, the siblings encounter a greedy and repulsive villain, itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal their fortune and cold porridge for breakfast.

You have been warned...

Are you unlucky enough to own all 13 adventures?

The Bad Beginning

The Reptile Room

The Wide Window

The Miserable Mill

The Austere Academy

The Ersatz Elevator

The Vile Village

The Hostile Hospital

The Carnivorous Carnival

The Slippery Slope

The Grim Grotto

The Penultimate Peril

The End


And what about All the Wrong Questions? In this four-book series a 13-year-old Lemony chronicles his dangerous and puzzling apprenticeship in a mysterious organisation that nobody knows anything about:

‘Who Could That Be at This Hour?’

‘When Did you Last See Her?’

‘Shouldn’t You Be in School?’

‘Why is This Night Different from All Other Nights?’

[B.]

Another edition for Dante to add to his collection

Also was it not originally published in 1999? Maybe not in the UK though

[Skelly Craig]

I wonder if it's just special because of the sticker on it (and perhaps the new back text), or it has other contents? Seems like it's only the former. And who the heck is Mr Gum.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Jun 21, 2020 11:13:08 GMT -5 Skelly Craig said:

 And who the heck is Mr Gum.

www.mrgum.co.uk/author/

[Skelly Craig]

Yeah I know I can google him, my point was that the connection to ASoUE seems rather tenuous, and I doubt someone would know some Mr Gum before Lemony Snicket (I've never heard of the Mr Gum books before).

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

I think he must have been quoted that way just to make himself better known.

[Dante]

Jun 21, 2020 8:12:19 GMT -5 B. said:

Another edition for Dante to add to his collection

Also was it not originally published in 1999? Maybe not in the UK though

That's correct; the series didn't begin its publication run in the U.K. for some years, and took until TPP to catch up to simultaneous release on both sides of the Atlantic. They were also initially published by an imprint called Mammoth, which was subsequently acquired by Egmont. I just verified this in my Egmont copy of TBB (well, one of my copies) - "First published in Great Britain 2001 by Mammoth". Later editions I possess erase Mammoth's role in the whole thing and just claim it was originally published 2001 by Egmont.

So far as bonus goodies go, a few years ago Egmont did publish an "Egmont Modern Classics" edition of TBB with an altered cover, and that did include bonus material: The Author's Notes from the Rare Edition, and a short interview with Snicket. So Egmont have access to those if they want, but it sounds like the only real difference here are the fancy gold foil effects on their original paper-over-board cover.

[bear]

Mr Gum is an absolute legend

[A comet crashing into Earth]

If they add any new material, I'm definitely going to want this. The gold foil looks nifty, but if that's the only new detail, I'm not sure I can convince myself to pay for an edition that's so similar to one I already have. Anyway, it's nice that Egmont is treating the anniversary as an Occasion, even if it'd have felt more appropriate for HarperCollins to have done so last so year.

[Dante]

The 7th of January has come, and this book is now officially out! I have yet to receive my copy, but I will naturally provide a full breakdown once it passes into my hands.

[Christmas Chief]

Looking forward to hearing about the features. I was not sure if the gold foil would be on the cover only or also on the edges of the pages, but both sound nifty.

[gothicarchiesfan]

I was initially surprised at how willing this press release was to directly link ASOUE and AWTQ together until I remembered that in the UK, both series are published by Egmont.

[Dante]

Jan 7, 2021 22:00:13 GMT -5 gothicarchiesfan said:

I was initially surprised at how willing this press release was to directly link ASOUE and AWTQ together until I remembered that in the UK, both series are published by Egmont.

Even Little, Brown & Co. seemed to unbend a little on this about halfway through ATWQ, presumably as it became clear that Snicket's name alone wasn't drawing readers the way they wanted. But it's true that this is a far less complex matter in the U.K.

[Dante]

You have now seen the sum total of the new content associated with this edition. It's simply TBB: 20th Anniversary Very Pretty Edition.

(There are a couple of minor formatting tweaks inside, a page promoting the rest of the series, the first chapter of TRR etc. - but nothing meaningful.)

Edit: Oh, it also has a red ribbon bookmark attached.

[Christmas Chief]

I'm guessing there are no gilded edges? (E.g., this)