CANR
WORK TITLE: I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://beagleverse.com/
CITY: Berkeley
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 336
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born April 20 (one source says April 29), 1939, in New York, NY; son of Simon and Rebecca Beagle; married Enid Elaine Nordeen, May 8, 1964 (divorced, July, 1980); married Padma Hejmadi (a writer and artist), September 21, 1988; children: (first marriage) Victoria Lynn Nordeen, Kalisa Nordeen, Daniel Nordeen.
EDUCATION:University of Pittsburgh, B.A., 1959; Stanford University, graduate study, 1960-61.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author, editor, screenwriter, journalist, and musician. University of Washington, visiting professor, 1988.
AVOCATIONS:Singing, playing the guitar, writing and performing music, reading, animals, walking, swimming.
MEMBER:American Civil Liberties Union (vice chair, Santa Cruz Chapter, 1968-69), Friends of Davis (California activist group), Society for American Baseball Research.
AWARDS:Winner, Scholastic Writing Awards Contest, 1955; first place, Seventeen magazine short story contest, for “Telephone Call”; Wallace Stegner writing fellowship, 1960-61; Guggenheim Foundation Award, 1972-73; National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1977-78; guest of honor, Seventh World Fantasy Convention, 1981; Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, 1987, for The Folk of the Air; Locus magazine named Beagle the Number Four All-Time Fantasy Novelist and the Number Eighteen All-Time Novelist, and selected The Last Unicorn as the Number Five All-Time Fantasy Novel, all 1987; Locus Award, and Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for adult literature, both 1999, both for The Innkeeper’s Song; Locus Award for best anthology, 1996, for Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn, Volume One; Locus Award for best novella, 1998, for Giant Bones; Locus Award for best novella, 1998, for The Unicorn Sonata; Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and World Fantasy Award, both 2000, both for Tamsin; Inkpot Award for Outstanding Achievement in Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2006; Hugo Award for best novelette, 2006, and Nebula Award, 2007, both for Two Hearts; WSFA Small Press Award for short fiction, Washington Science Fiction Society, 2007, for “El Regalo”; World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement, 2011; Best Anthology Prize, World Fantasy Awards, 2018, for The New Voices of Fantasy; Jack Trevor Story Memorial Prize/Prix du Goncourt, 2020; 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time selection, Time Magazine, 2020, for The Last Unicorn; Locus Award for best illustrated and art book, Locus Science Fiction Foundation, 2025, for The Last Unicorn. Several of Beagle’s short stories also won awards in the years of their original publication.
POLITICS: “Anarcho/monarchist.” RELIGION: Jewish animist.WRITINGS
Also author of “Sarek” (television script), Star Trek: The Next Generation, season three, 1990. Also author of film scripts for A Fine and Private Place and for a live-action movie version of The Last Unicorn. Author of scripts for Camelot and The Story of Moses, both 1996. Author of script for A Whale of a Tale, a television special featuring characters from the film The Little Mermaid, for Walt Disney Studios.
The Last Unicorn is the subject of “Captain Cully,” a short play by Aaron Shepard directed to middle graders and junior high school students that appears in the book Stories on Stage; A Fine and Private Place was adapted as a musical by Erik Haagensen (book and lyrics) and Richard Isen (music) and published by Samuel French, 1992. Beagle released a recording, Peter S. Beagle—Live!, in 1991.
SIDELIGHTS
An American author who is considered a master fantasist as well as a distinguished writer of nonfiction, Peter S. Beagle is celebrated for his originality, inventiveness, skill with plot and characterization, and rich, evocative literary style. In addition to novels, he has written short stories, poetry, essays, and screenplays for film and television and has edited and contributed to anthologies. Beagle is also an accomplished folk singer, guitarist, and songwriter who has released a live album and has written the libretto for an opera based on one of his short stories.
He is perhaps best known as the author of The Last Unicorn, a fantasy that describes the quest of the title character to discover the last of her species. Using the classic fairy tale as his basic structure, Beagle created a work that is credited with breathing new life into the fantasy genre through its blend of comedy, tragedy, pathos, literary allusions, and contemporary culture. The Last Unicorn is usually acknowledged as a landmark, a postmodern touchstone that has been compared favorably to such works as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. In his other fantasies, Beagle continues to marry the traditional fairy story, fable, and legend to realistic concerns, notably the state of the human condition and the thin lines between fantasy and reality, life and death. Although he generally is not considered a writer for the young, Beagle has written two books, The Unicorn Sonata and Tamsin, that feature thirteen-year-old girls as main characters. Some of his other fantasies are also popular with young adults, especially The Last Unicorn and his first novel, A Fine and Private Place. Youthful audiences enjoy the lively talking animals and supernatural characters in Beagle’s works as well as his fiction’s humor, action, and romance. In addition, young people appreciate much of Beagle’s nonfiction, especially I See by My Outfit, an account of Beagle’s trip from New York to California by motor scooter; American Denim: A New Folk Art, a history of blue jeans; and In the Presence of Elephants, one of two books written with and about Pat Derby, a California animal trainer and activist who is the founder of PAWS (Performing Animals’ Welfare Society), an organization for abused or neglected animals in show business.
As a writer, Beagle is regarded as a lyrical, elegant, and economical stylist who fills his works with eloquent language and colorful images and metaphors. He often mixes slang, Yiddish phrases, and pop culture references with the language of high fantasy and romance; he also favors disparate narrative techniques and, on occasion, multiple points of view. In addition, Beagle includes humor, wit, and perhaps most notably, irony in his books; his inclusion of irony in his fantasies is often acknowledged as a new feature in the genre. As a fantasist, Beagle has been compared to such authors as Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Hans Christian Andersen, C.S. Lewis, Lord Dunsany, James Thurber, and Robert Nathan. The author is praised consistently for his relevant portrayals of people of various ages and ethnic backgrounds and for making the otherworldly seem familiar and real. Thematically, Beagle addresses such subjects as renewal and rebirth, the nature of truth, the power of love and friendship, good versus evil, the difficulties of aging, and the importance of fantasy and wonder in readers’ lives, issues thought to give his books depth and authenticity. Critics have noted that Beagle sometimes overwrites and that some of his works are disappointing, thin, overlong, or incoherent. However, most observers have agreed that Beagle is a gifted writer whose books have helped to transform the fantasy novel while contributing greatly to a variety of other genres. Writing in Booklist, John Mort called Beagle “the class act of fantasy writing, the only one to remind me of Tolkien. … Gentle yet biting, far-fetched and altogether common, Beagle’s fairy tales invoke comparisons with those associated with yet another great name, the Brothers Grimm.”
Born in New York City, Beagle is the son of two teachers, Simon and Rebecca Soyer Beagle. At seventy-three, his mother translated a collection of fairy tales her father had written in Hebrew more than forty years before; Beagle wrote the foreword to the book. He grew up in the Bronx, and he wrote in an article in Holiday magazine: “As far as New York is concerned, I grew up at the end of the world. The subways end, and the buses run by appointment only.” Beagle’s neighborhood was lined with trees and surrounded by hills. While he was going to elementary school in the East Bronx, there was, he said, “the ghost of a farm just across the street from us, a jungly, terrifying place owned by a half-mad old man who threw stones at us when we tried to sneak up on him at lunch hour. Less and less these days, but still more than the rest of New York, the Bronx reminds you that it was wild country once.”
Beagle lived near the Bronx Zoo and spent many hours there as a child. He wrote in Today’s Health: “I was shy, overweight, ill-conditioned, asthmatic, and allergic to everything. … My parents gave me a great deal of affection, but not many other people did. I came home from school and read books. I remember that I had a long-lived fantasy about being a wolf—and, as late as high school—an imaginary lion friend named Cyrano. Thinking about that time now, I realize that in its own painful way, it was invaluable for me. I learned to be alone. Nobody who wants to be a writer can do without that skill. I learned to entertain myself and to look after myself, in a sloppily efficient sort of way. And I taught myself not to care what anyone else thought about me. I can remember making that decision, very consciously, around the sixth grade. I also lost the ability to cry, but you pay for everything.”
At an early age, Beagle decided to become a writer. In an interview with Dan Tooker and Roger Hofheins in their Fiction! Interviews with Northern California Novelists, Beagle stated: “I started [to write] when I was seven, literally. My parents were remarkable. They never told me that writing was not a fit profession for a young man. I can remember writing stories in class. I wanted to imitate sounds. I love sounds. I was always excited by the sensuality of words and I wanted to copy that. I would imitate other writers. I haven’t altogether lost that. The Last Unicorn starts off imitating a half dozen people: James Stephens, Thurber, T.H. White. And Lord Dunstan is always somewhere in the background.”
At the Bronx High School of Science, Beagle’s friends and acquaintances were almost all from the North and West Bronx and were Jewish, like himself. He wrote in Holiday magazine: “We were intelligent, hungrily so, having been the family prodigies, the block’s ‘walking dictionaries’ long enough to be sick of it, and, for many of us, high school was the first contact we had had with people like ourselves.” Beagle and his friends traded records, read their plays to one another, and showed each other their poetry and art. They went to the theater, to movies, and to museums—“to all the places,” Beagle recalled, “that had bored us so when our parents used to take us there.” He added: “And we talked—lord, how we learned to talk!—constantly, perpetually. … We all began running away from home about then; rarely in the classic sense—Tom Sawyer never had College Boards—but within ourselves.”
Beagle was a frequent contributor to his school’s literary magazine. His work attracted the attention of the fiction editor at Seventeen magazine. As a teenager, Beagle was befriended by poet Louis Untermeyer, who passed him on to his literary agent, Elizabeth Otis, who was also the agent for novelist John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath. At nineteen, Beagle completed a novel that Otis placed with the Viking Press. That work, A Fine and Private Place, was published in 1960, when the author was just twenty-one.
Set in a Bronx cemetery, A Fine and Private Place features Jonathan Rebeck, a fifty-three-year-old druggist who had gone bankrupt twenty years before. After giving up on the world, Rebeck went to live in an isolated mausoleum, where he has survived on food stolen from a nearby deli by a tough-talking raven. Rebeck has gotten to know the ghosts of the recently deceased. However, his relationship with them lasts for only a short while, since they soon forget their lives and fall into an endless sleep. Two of these ghosts are Michael Morgan and Laura Durand, a couple who meet in the cemetery, fall in love, and decide that they want to avoid their fate. Rebeck decides to help the couple and does so with the help of Mrs. Gertrude Klapper, a widow who visits her husband’s grave in the cemetery. The story ends with multiple happy endings, including Rebeck moving out of the cemetery into the land of the living.
A Fine and Private Place has been noted as a funny and tender story that demonstrates that love is stronger than death and includes an especially amusing character, the scene-stealing raven. Beagle was also lauded for the assurance he displayed as a writer, especially one just out of his teens. Writing in Saturday Review, Granville Hicks stated that A Fine and Private Place “seems to me quite as important as many solemn and pretentious novels I have read. … [Beagle] persuades the reader to play his game of make-believe, and then rewards him with an admirably sustained performance. For so young a writer, he is amazingly sure of himself, and it will be interesting to see what he writes next.” Harold Jaffe, writing in Commonweal, commented that Beagle seems to be saying that death “is life without feeling. A familiar enough admonishment, certainly, but I have never felt its authenticity in quite the same way.” Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Edmund Fuller concluded: “A disembodied love in our literary climate is about as original as a young man can be. … The great thing is that A Fine and Private Place has wit, charm, and individuality—with a sense of style and structure notable in a first novel. … The publishers evoke E.B. White and Robert Nathan in comparison. I think Peter DeVries might be closer. Be that as it may; watch Beagle.” In 1992, A Fine and Private Place was adapted into a musical comedy by Erik Haagensen and Richard Isen.
In his senior year of high school, Beagle entered a story and a poem in the Scholastic Writing Awards Contest. His poem won first prize: a college scholarship. Beagle went to the University of Pittsburgh. While at the university, Beagle was taught by the Irish short story writer and translator Frank O’Connor, who disliked the genre of fantasy. Beagle wrote a short story, “Come, Lady Death” to see whether he could sneak it by O’Connor. The story, later published, is now recognized as one of Beagle’s best early efforts; it was also turned into an opera with a libretto by Beagle and music by David Carlson. As a college sophomore, Beagle won first place in a short story contest sponsored by Seventeen magazine. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and a minor in Spanish.
Beagle then spent a year in Europe. In an article for Holiday magazine, Beagle called this period “a lonesome, stupid time, and if I learned anything from it, it doesn’t show.” However, he was astounded by the performances of Georges Brassens, a powerful French singer and guitarist whose recordings had impressed him. Beagle noted: “Brassens was my bag, my bit, my thing, my hangup; as he still is, really.” Beagle returned to the United States to attend graduate school at Stanford University in California after being enrolled there by his agent; he stayed at Stanford for a year on a Wallace Stegner Writing Fellowship. In 1963, Beagle and a friend, Phil Signuick, took an eventful cross-country journey from New York to California on their mopeds, a trip documented in the memoir I See by My Outfit. In 1964, Beagle married Enid Elaine Nordeen, the mother of his two daughters, Victoria and Kalisa, and his son, Danny. Beagle wrote in the Saturday Evening Post: “Before they came, I think, I slept through my relationships with others, as I did through my childhood and my schooling.” Enid and the children also brought animals back into Beagle’s life; eventually, the family acquired seventy-five creatures, including a quail, a parrot, a squirrel, a chipmunk, an iguana, a shrew, and a kinkajou, as well as dogs, cats, horses, birds, ferrets, and others.
In 1968, Beagle produced The Last Unicorn. In this work, a nameless unicorn is prompted to leave her enchanted forest after she overhears some hunters state that she is the last of her kind; the fact is confirmed by a butterfly from a faraway land who talks in a combination of twentieth-century slang, song lyrics, and a more courtly form of speech. After the unicorn sets off to look for her missing species, she is captured by Mommy Fortuna, a sorceress who runs Mommy Fortuna’s Midnight Carnival and who weaves spells that make people believe that they are seeing mythical beasts when they are actually seeing domestic and wild animals. The unicorn is freed by Schmendrick the Magician, a bumbling wizard who botches simple tricks but can, on occasion, perform true feats of magic. Schmendrick has had a spell placed on him that causes him to remain immortal until he becomes competent. He and the unicorn are joined by Molly Grue, a cynical, middle-aged scullery maid who has been a Maid Marian figure to Captain Cully, a Robin Hood wannabe who lives with a group of distinctly unmerry men. The trio go to Hagsgate, a wasteland where time has stopped and imagination has been destroyed. The kingdom is ruled by King Haggard, who lives in a castle by the sea with his son, Prince Lir, an ineffectual hero, and the Red Bull, an evil being created by Haggard. The king has imprisoned the unicorns because he wishes to possess all of their beauty. He has fashioned the Red Bull, a creature that sees only unicorns, to hunt them down and trap them in the sea.
To gain access to the castle, the unicorn is turned into a human by Schmendrick. As Lady Amalthea, the unicorn forgets her immortal nature, and she and Prince Lir fall in love. Schmendrick and Molly try to find the lost unicorns before Amalthea loses her memory and becomes a mortal permanently. After the two discover the trapped prisoners, the unicorn reverts back to her original form. When she is charged by the Red Bull, Prince Lir selflessly throws himself in front of the creature to save the unicorn’s life. His sacrifice gives the unicorn the power to drive the Red Bull into the sea, thus freeing her brethren. At the end of the story, King Haggard’s kingdom is destroyed by a tidal wave, Prince Lir becomes King Lir, Schmendrick and Molly go off to find other adventures, and the unicorn goes back to her world, knowing good and evil, love, and mortality; her innocence has been replaced with experience.
The Last Unicorn often is lauded as a masterpiece of fantasy writing, a novel that can be read purely as an adventure story or as an exploration of the purpose of life. It is considered both a parody of its traditional sources—the fairy tale, the quest story, the romantic fantasy, and others—and a reestablishment of the fantasy genre. At the time of its publication, The Last Unicorn was an instant success and became a best seller. Most reviewers had high praise for the novel. For example, Rochelle Girson, writing in Saturday Review, stated that Beagle “has extraordinary inventive powers, and they make every page a delight. … Beagle is a true magician with words, a master of prose and a deft practitioner in verse. He has been compared, not unreasonably, with Lewis Carroll and J.R.R. Tolkien, but he stands squarely and triumphantly on his own feet.” Subsequent critics have continued to praise Beagle and his creation. A writer in St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers commented that The Last Unicorn “remains the book for which Beagle will always be known and to which all his later work will be compared. … It is one of the enduring classics of American fantasy.” Writing in Imaginary Worlds: The Art of Fantasy, Lin Carter stated that The Last Unicorn “is in a class by itself,” while Jon Pennington, writing in Mythlore, called the novel “a new type of fantasy that is a powerful vision for our modern world.” Pennington concluded that Beagle “recombines the archetypal patterns of fairy tales into a vision that is specifically modern. And American.”
The Last Unicorn has always had a loyal and supportive audience among young people. Initially, the novel appealed especially to hippies, artists, musicians, and fans of such authors as Tolkien and the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein; it became recognized as a cult classic. Many websites devoted to the book and to the animated film version produced by Marble Arch/Rankin-Bass in 1981 have since appeared. In addition to the film, The Last Unicorn has been adapted for the stage and as a short play for children. Beagle has noted that he wrote The Last Unicorn as an homage to the authors he loved and whose style he wanted to emulate, such as Lord Dunsany, James Stephens, James Thurber, and E.B. White. In an interview with David Van Becker in San Jose Studies, Beagle said that with The Last Unicorn, “I was deliberately taking the classic fairy-tale structure, the classic fairy-tale characters, and trying to do something else with them. I was saddling myself and aiding myself both with the proper forms.”
After the publication of The Last Unicorn, Beagle did not produce another fantasy novel for eighteen years. In the meantime, he produced screenplays for film and television, including The Last Unicorn and The Lord of the Rings, Part One (with Chris Conkling), as well as writing short stories, novellas, nonfiction, forewords, and articles. In 1969, he produced The California Feeling, a memoir that describes Beagle’s year-long trek across California with his photographer friend Michael Bry; the two traveled in a 1957 Volkswagen bus they named Renata Tebaldi.
Beagle also began performing regularly as a folk singer. In 1973, he began a part-time engagement as the dinner entertainment at L’Oustalou, a French restaurant in Santa Cruz, California, a gig that lasted for twelve years. As a singer/guitarist, he performs songs in English, French, German, and Yiddish, including several of his own compositions. Beagle has also released a live album of one of his concerts.
In 1980, Beagle’s marriage to Enid Elaine Nordeen ended. He moved to Seattle, Washington, in 1985 but returned to California after a few years. In 1987, he published his next work of fantasy, The Folk of the Air. This novel features Joe Farrell, a wandering musician and talented lute player who first appeared in Beagle’s novella Lila the Werewolf in 1974. Joe goes to Avicenna, a college town on the California coast. He moves in with his friend Ben, a college buddy now living with Sia, an attractive older woman who is a practicing psychologist. Joe runs into a former girlfriend, Julie Tanikawa, who is involved in the League for Archaic Pleasures, a role-playing group that reenacts medieval battles and celebrations. Joe becomes involved and learns that the League is real, not a game; its members actually become the characters that they portray. While attending a meeting, Joe and Julie watch Aiffe, a teenage witch, summon up Nicholas Bonner, a young man who was sent into limbo five centuries earlier. Bonner has a vendetta against Sia, who is actually an ancient goddess of immense power. Finally, Joe realizes that Sia is the only thing that can protect them all from destruction, and she and Bonner engage in a magical duel to the death.
The Folk of the Air is perhaps Beagle’s most highly disputed work. Due perhaps to the high level of expectation surrounding its publication, the novel received a mixed reception. However, its multiculturalism and prose style were praised consistently. Observers also noted the similarity of Avicenna to Berkeley, California, and the League for Archaic Pleasures to the real-life Society for Creative Anachronism. The year after the publication of The Folk of the Air, Beagle married Padma Hejmadi, a writer and artist of Indian descent.
In 1993, Beagle produced The Innkeeper’s Song, a novel that is often considered among his best; based on a song written by Beagle, it is the author’s favorite among his own works. In this book, three women—one black, one brown, and one paler than a corpse—take a room at a village inn, the Gaff and Slasher. Two of the women, Lal, a mercenary, and Nyaterneri, a warrior priestess, are the former pupils of a magician, The Man Who Laughs. The third woman, Lukassa, has been called back from the dead by Lal. The Man Who Laughs is being pursued by Arshadin, a former protégé who has sold his blood and soul to the Others for immortality. Arshadin intends to kill the wizard, turn him into an evil ghost, and send him to the Others in return for his blood. Young Tikat, a weaver’s son, searches for his betrothed, Lukassa, after he views her death and resurrection. Rosseth, the stable boy at the Gaff and Slasher, also becomes involved, as does Karsh, the bad-tempered innkeeper, and Nyaterneri’s familiar, a cranky, shape-shifting fox. Finally, Arshadin turns The Man Who Laughs into a ghost, but Lukassa makes a deal with the Others that saves the wizard. Beagle uses ten different viewpoints to tell the story, which addresses the issues of the nature of life, death, and love.
Writing in Locus, Gary K. Wolfe stated: “ The Last Unicorn may always be Beagle’s best fantasy, but The Innkeeper’s Song … is his best novel.” Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Gerald Jonas opined that, as a commercial genre, fantasy “has come to mean endlessly recycled adventures of sword-wielding heroes and spell-casting wizards, recounted in pseudopoetic prose as dreary and predictable as the characters and settings. This makes the achievement of Peter S. Beagle in The Innkeeper’s Song all the more remarkable. In his capable hands, even the most timeworn material shines again.” In an interview with Ed Bryant in Prime Time Replay, Beagle called The Innkeeper’s Song “my first grown-up book.” Giant Bones, a collection of six stories published in 1997, is set in the same land as The Innkeeper’s Song and includes a story, “Lal and Soukyan,” that features some of the same characters.
The Unicorn Sonata, a novel published in 1996, is the first of Beagle’s works to feature a young-adult protagonist. Josephine “Joey” Rivera is a thirteen-year-old Latina girl living in contemporary Los Angeles. A natural musician, she helps to clean up a music store in exchange for lessons in music theory. One day, a strange young man, Indigo, comes into the store to try to sell a musical horn, but he leaves before the transaction can take place. Later, Joey hears a distant melody and follows it down the street. She accidentally crosses the Divide, an invisible border, and enters a mystical place called Shei’rah. Joey encounters many mythological creatures, including the Eldest, unicorns whose music is one of the foundations of Shei’rah. The Eldest are being weakened by a mysterious disease that is stealing their sight. Crossing between her world and Shei’rah, Joey works furiously to transcribe the music of the Eldest before it is lost. At the same time, she tries to save her beloved Mexican grandmother, Abuelita, from the retirement home.
Joey learns that Indigo is actually an Eldest who prefers to live on Earth as a human being. Selling his horn will permit him to live well, although its loss will prohibit him from going home to Shei’rah. In addition, Joey discovers that Indigo’s greed for gold is the cause of the blindness that affects the unicorns. Joey takes Abuelita, a wise healer, to Shei’rah to help cure the plague, and she recalls an old folk remedy for blindness that uses gold as its chief ingredient. Finally, Indigo decides to relinquish his selfish plans in order to save the Eldest. Writing in Library Journal, Susan Hamburger stated: “This enchanting story of seeking a true home is highly recommended.” In Booklist, Ray Olson commented: “America’s finest gentle fantasist manages to point up the best qualities of both real life and fantasy, of both Earth and Shei’rah.” A critic in Publishers Weekly called The Unicorn Sonata “a charming fantasy” and concluded that “the characterizations are grand, enhanced by graceful prose laced with exquisite detail, and through both literary creativity and folkloric expertise where unicorns are concerned.” Beagle, who has become recognized as an expert on unicorns, is also the editor, with Janet Berliner and Martin H. Greenberg, of two collections of short stories featuring the mythical beast, Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn, Volume One and Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn, Volume Two.
Tamsin, a novel that blends history, folklore, and the supernatural, is the second of Beagle’s works to feature a teenager as its main character and the first to use one as its narrator. Jenny Gluckstein, a petulant, rebellious thirteen-year-old New Yorker, moves to England with her divorced mother, Sally, who plans to marry Evan McHugh, an agricultural biologist. Evan is responsible for restoring and managing the rundown Stourhead Farm—a place beset by strange accidents, noises, and smells—in Dorset, England. When Jenny’s cat chases a Persian ghost cat, it leads her to a secret chamber and its owner, Tamsin Willoughby, a twenty-year-old girl who died 300 years before. The daughter of the farm’s original builder, Tamsin is in mourning for her lover, Edric, a poor musician, and is fearful of a figure that she calls the Other One. Jenny meets a variety of preternatural creatures, including the Black Dog, who warns her of danger; the billy-blind, who gives advice to her; and the Pooka, an untrustworthy, unsympathetic shape-shifter. Jenny learns that Tamsin and Edric will be tormented eternally if she does not help them; she must decide whether she is brave and unselfish enough to aid the ghostly lovers.
By piecing together Tamsin’s memories and information gathered from local historians, Jenny discovers that the Other One is the evil George Jeffreys, the “hanging judge” who presided over the Bloody Assizes and sent hundreds of people to violent deaths in the aftermath of the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685. Jeffreys, who wanted to marry Tamsin, was responsible for Edric’s disappearance. Jenny narrates the tale in retrospect as a nineteen-year-old in brash contemporary language; Beagle also includes Tamsin’s refined Jacobean English and the earthy dialect of old Dorset. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly stated: “Like his enchanting The Last Unicorn, Beagle’s newest fantasy features characters so real they leap off his pages and into readers’ souls. … Fantasy rarely dances through the imagination in more radiant garb than this.” Booklist contributor John Mort asserted: “Although nowhere labeled as such, Tamsin is a fine young adult novel. … [It] may be the best of its kind this year.” Although some reviewers were less than enchanted by Jenny’s whiny persona in the beginning of Tamsin, most acknowledge that she is one of Beagle’s most convincing characterizations. For example, Teri Smith, writing in the online Crescent City Book Views, commented: “Beagle creates a moody, spoiled, opinionated thirteen-year-old and makes us believe in and care for her. … Beagle’s characters will stay in your heart forever.”
Beagle followed Tamsin with A Dance for Emilia and The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version. The latter book is the first draft of Beagle’s classic fantasy novel, The Last Unicorn. In this version, only the unicorn remains the same, and all of the other characters are different. The book begins in the same manner as Beagle’s previous iteration, but the story proceeds on an alternate path. The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version features a straggly dragon who tells the unicorn that the world is no longer ruled by creatures like themselves. The two-headed demon, Azazel and Webster, is also featured. Azazel and Webster has been exiled from hell, and its heads are constantly bickering with one another.
Beagle initially abandoned this first draft because he was no longer interested in pursuing the religious themes therein. But, as Olson pointed out in Booklist, “thank heavens … that he persevered and now publishes this funny, darkly winsome fragment.” He called the book “must reading for Last Unicorn fans.” Noting that this draft was a “first, unsuccessful attempt,” a Publishers Weekly critic remarked that “even [Beagle’s] failures are marvels of wry humor and brilliant prose styling.”
Beagle’s Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle, is a collection of Beagle’s short stories, from his earliest works to those included in The Magician of Karakosk: And Other Stories, The Line Between, and We Never Talk about My Brother. The volume is filled with stories of reality with a magical twist or underpinning. In “El Regalo,” a time traveler trapped in Thursday is rescued by his brother, and in “We Never Talk about My Brother,” Beagle portrays an angel attempting to stop the angel of death. Angels also appear in “Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel,” in which several rabbis encounter a host of angels. In “Lila the Werewolf” and “What Tune the Enchantress Plays,” mystical beings worry over their troubled relationships with their mothers, while ghosts make an appearance in “The Rabbi’s Hobby.”
Reviews of Mirror Kingdoms were predominantly positive, as reviewers found that the book will appeal to longtime Beagle fans and new readers alike. A Publishers Weekly contributor dubbed the volume a “magnificent grand tour of [Beagle’s] many created worlds” and added that the book “will thrill his legions of fans.” Olson, writing once again in Booklist, felt that Beagle’s stories are “superb and in superb company.”
Beagle has continued to contribute works to several genres, and much of his writing appeals to young people. For example, he has written forewords to books by Tolkien as well as a story and teleplay, “Sarek,” as an episode of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. He also has given readings, lectures, and concerts at universities, has conducted writing workshops at academic institutions, and has appeared at fantasy conventions. Beagle confided to David Van Becker in San Jose Studies that he sees himself as a traditional storyteller, “a descendant of Scheherazade … a long line of people who made up stories in the bazaar.”
Critics welcomed Sleight of Hand, a collection of thirteen stories Beagle published in 2011. The collection bridges fantasy and reality, a hallmark of Beagle’s work, and balances light fare with noir. Among the stories are new takes on familiar tales and characters, including Jack and the Beanstalk and a modern werewolf, as well as original horror and ghost stories. Running through the collection are themes of love and fate. A brief preface to each story provides readers insight into its origins.
“Beagle manages to write stories … that seem to be told from Alice’s Wonderland,” remarked Rebecca Gerber in a review for Booklist. A Publishers Weekly critic called Sleight of Hand, a “bittersweet collection” that “pays tribute to the complicated power of family ties.” “Short story and fantasy lovers will devour these tasty tidbits that whet the appetite for more,” concluded Charli Osborne in Xpress Reviews. On the website Strange Horizons, reviewer T.S. Miller opined: “With its engaging and wide-ranging selection of fantasies, Sleight of Hand seems the perfect book for an author to publish in the same year that his towering status in the field has finally been formalized with a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, proving … that this achievement lies not only in the past, but remains very much a thing of the present.”
Beagle’s 2016 novel, Summerlong, is set in Washington State’s Puget Sound and features a magical young woman, Lioness Lazos, who seems to have amazing powers. A waitress on Gardner Island, Lioness has come to island just as the brutal winter turns into a surprisingly mild and beautiful spring, followed by an equally and unusually perfect summer. Soon Lioness is drawn to a pair of older lovers who have grown disenchanted with one another: Abe Aronson, who is scholarly and removed, and Joanna Delvecchio, more spontaneous in nature. Joanna’s daughter, Lily, also arrives for a visit. Lioness is offered a room in Abe’s garage, and soon these three feel the need to investigate their strongest and most private dreams and feelings in Lioness’s magical presence. As the lovely days of summer progress, Lioness seems to grow even more vital; however, she has a secret from her past that ultimately separates her from her new friends even as the days of summer are ending. When Lioness’s mother and her husband arrive in town, her past begins to come apart. Now Abe, Joanna, and Lily realize they are actually watching the unfolding of the Greek myth of Persephone.
Critics responded warmly to this long-awaited novel from Beagle. A Kirkus Reviews Online contributor felt that Beagle “crafts a convincing portrait of mature happiness between personable characters who are imperfect, but lovingly familiar, and an idyllic take on the Puget Sound region.” Writing in Booklist, Nicole Foti commented of Summerlong: “Themes of love, loss, nurturing, and adapting are wrapped up in this deliberate and bittersweet tale of what it is to love in your own time, in your own way.” Similarly, a Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that Beagle “recasts a primeval myth in this … strange and lovely lyric vision.” Strange Horizons website contributor Stephen Case also had praise, observing: “Though Beagle’s prose doesn’t catch at your throat in the way it did in The Last Unicorn …, what Beagle does much better here is craft real conversations between real people. It’s these conversations, what they say about how people react to the unreal in their lives and what they imply for how relationships grow, flourish, and wither, that will stay with you when the story is concluded.” An online Rising Shadow writer also had a high assessment, commenting: “Peter S. Beagle’s Summerlong is such a marvellously written and touching novel that fans of literary fantasy simply can’t afford to miss it. It’s a masterpiece of subtle storytelling that enchants you with its beauty and wistfulness. I recommend this novel to everyone who enjoys literary fiction and loves gradually unfolding stories.”
Beagle’s 2017 short fable-like novel, In Calabria, is, as the title suggests, set in the scenic region of Calabria in southern Italy. Claudio Bianchi is a grouchy and suspicious farmer who has always resisted change. His farm is remote from the winds of modernity, and he intends to keep it that way. Then one day he is amazed to discover a golden-white unicorn on his property. A secret poet, Claudio immediately feels protective of the unicorn, which is obviously pregnant. Old emotions and feelings begin to come back to him as daily he visits this unicorn, and when the media, tourists, and animal rights activists get wind of the unicorn, he must also protect her from such human incursions. Finally, Claudio is able to help in the delivery of the unicorn’s colt, an act that so warms his heart that he begins to woo the sister of his postman.
Writing in Booklist, Heather McCammond-Watts felt that In Calabria “is a story more about redemption and healing than about unicorns, but its soft and subtle phrasing is a pleasing and pastoral look at the power of forgiveness.” Similarly, a Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that this “charming, lyrical tale … shows how a man who seems to have nothing can really have everything—with just a touch of magic.” NPR.org contributor Tasha Robinson was also impressed, commenting: “ In Calabria is exactly like Bianchi himself: practical on the surface, but harboring an inner warmth and sentiment that informs every step. Like so much of Beagle’s work, it’s about jaded adults experiencing childlike awe again, for better and worse.”
Beagle turns to the short story in his 2017 baker’s dozen collection, The Overneath. Among others are stories about his character Schmendrick the Magician from The Last Unicorn. The magician’s backstory is presented in “The Green-Eyed Boy,” in which he comes of age as the apprentice to the wizard Nikos. The magician is also featured in “Schmendrick Alone,” in which he has left the tutelage of Nikos and tries quite unsuccessfully to protect a lady from an unwanted suitor. Other stories deal in fantasy, as the world of Overneath of the title comes to life in “The Way It Works Out and All,” and the writing turns to the supernatural in “The Very Nasty Aquarium.”
A Kirkus Reviews critic termed the stories in The Overneath “fantasy gems” and called the volume “a masterful collection from a short story master—a must-read for Beagle fans.” A Publishers Weekly Online reviewer also had a high assessment of the work, noting: “This enchanting collection employs simple humor and affectionate sarcasm and will enchant any reader who still believes in magic.” Likewise, Pop Mythology website writer Matt Hlinak commented that Beagle’s “version of fantasy is a whimsical one, though he never descends into farce. He takes his characters seriously, even if the reader cannot help but chuckle at their misadventures. Peter S. Beagle’s charms have not worn off.”
[OPEN NEW]
Along with being a celebrated author, Beagle has also collected and edited the work of other writers. In The New Voices of Fantasy, he and co-editor Jacob Weisman brought nineteen short stories of up-and-coming fantasy authors to a much wider audience. The focus was on recent fiction, with all of the stories having been published since 2010. Most had been published elsewhere, but one story was written particularly for this anthology.
Critics pointed out that The New Voices of Fantasy was a counterpoint to Beagle’s earlier The Secret History of Fantasy. That anthology had highlighted well-known authors, whereas the new one emphasized the “new” in the title. A writer in Kirkus Reviews praised it as a “stellar anthology” that brings together stories that have “transcended the conventions and cliches of contemporary fantasy.” They also appreciated the book’s “diversity of storylines.” Writing in World Literature Today, Brenda Peynado agreed, as she liked the “excellent range of emerging writers.” She wrote that each one is a “shining example of the genre,” and she recommended it to readers of either fantasy or literary fabulism.
Beagle and Weisman return with a more-focused anthology: The Unicorn Anthology. This book features sixteen different stories, all involving unicorns, from some of the bigger names in fantasy fiction, including Garth Nix, Jane Yolen, and Bruce Coville. Beagle included one of his own stories as well.
Charli Osborne, in Xpress Reviews, enjoyed this outing, calling it a “well-rounded collection” and praising the editors for “collecting a remarkable range of previously published unicorn stories.” Osborne noted that the stories tend to have an “aching melancholy” about them. In ForeWord, Meagan Logsdon appreciated the book’s “varied and creative” stories, and she particularly enjoyed the “unexpected and refreshing settings and situations” of many of the stories that transcend the “familiar medieval framework.” Logsdon especially praised Beagle’s own story.
Beagle’s next work was a collection of his own stories, actually a collection in two volumes: The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume 1: Lila the Werewolf and Other Stories and The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume 2: Oakland Dragon Blues and Other Stories. While most of the stories had appeared before, the second volume includes one that has not been published before and four that have not been published in other collections. The stories span from Beagle’s early career to the present, but the majority are from the twenty-first century. Each volume features a helpful introduction from a well-known author—Jane Yolen in the first volume and Meg Elison in the second.
Reviewers were thrilled to have these stories in two handy volumes. A writer in Publishers Weekly called the first volume an “impressive collection” and an “ideal entry point for newcomers and a lovely way for existing fans to revisit or rediscover old favorites.” A contributor in Kirkus Reviews praised the collection as “brimming with magic, lyrical prose, and deeply felt emotions.” They agreed with the book’s title that this is “essential reading.”
Beagle’s next work features new material but placed in a very familiar setting. As the title of The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn makes clear, Beagle has returned to his most famous book, The Last Unicorn, where he continues the story of Sooz. The first novella, “Two Hearts,” was originally published in 2006 and won a Hugo Award. In that, nine-year-old Sooz has to help save her village from a griffin, and she finds assistance from two familiar Beagle characters, Molly Grue and Schmendtick the Magician. In “Sooz,” a new novella written for this book, Sooz is now seventeen years old, and she befriends a woman of stone and helps her in her quest.
Critics were thrilled to revisit this world. “With beautiful worldbuilding and tons of heart, these tender fantasies are sure to delight,” wrote a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. They called the novellas “breathtaking.” Marlene Harris, in Library Journal, enjoyed them too, calling them “lovely.” Harris appreciated how they take the “charm” of the original novel and expand it into a larger framework.
I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons is Beagle’s first new novel in seven years. In the world of Bellemontagne, dragons come in all sizes, and Robert (whose full name involves five tongue-twisting words) has inherited the job of dragon exterminator. Unfortunately, Robert loves dragons and has no interest in taking on the role his father had before he died. Robert is soon ordered, however, to clear the king’s palace of dragons. Meanwhile, Prince Reginald hopes to help slay an especially impressive dragon so as to impress his father, so that he can marry the woman of his dreams.
Reviewers continued to be impressed with Beagle’s work. Andy Myers, in Library Journal, wrote that the story “embraces over-the-top fantasy tropes, and the effect is a tale that’s as hilarious as it is endearing.” Myers noted, however, that the story features a “deceptively serious narrative” to go along with its “charming” and “cozy” aesthetic. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly wrote that the book “offers surprises and humor aplenty alongside a hefty dose of classic dragon lore.”
[CLOSE NEW]
Author Comments
Writing in Holiday magazine, Beagle said: “My life is a slow process of making things real, making them continue to exist when my back is turned. It is my worst failing, this dangerous solipsism, but it is also one reason why I write: to create the world line-by-line, to find a way in, a handhold. For all I know, no one else in the world has this problem, but I wonder, ‘Could we all go on treating people the way we do if we believed that they were real?’ Lizard and louse, man and tiger, we are all here together, barely alive in the dark, clinging to the earth and trying to stay warm. Either we all have souls, or none of us do.” Writing in the St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers, Beagle concluded: “I write what I would love to read if someone else had written it. But no one else quite does what I do, so I have to. That’s really all the statement I can honestly make.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Beagle, Peter S., I See by My Outfit, Viking (New York, NY), 1965.
Beagle, Peter S., The California Feeling, photographs by Michael Bey and Ansel Adams, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1969.
Carter, Lin, Imaginary Worlds: The Art of Fantasy, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1973.
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 7, 1977, Volume 104, 1998.
Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1980, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1981.
Hark, Ina Rae, “The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle,” Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature, edited by Frank N. Magill, Salem Press (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1983.
Olderman, Raymond M., Beyond the Waste Land: A Study of the American Novel in the Nineteen-Sixties, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1972.
St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.
St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.
Tooker, Dan, and Roger Hofheins, Fiction! Interviews with Northern California Novelists, amended by Peter S. Beagle, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1972.
Zahorski, Kenneth J., Starmont Reader’s Guide: Peter Beagle, Starmont House (Mercer Island, WA), 1988.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, July, 1997, John Mort, review of Giant Bones, p. 1806; August, 1996, Ray Olson, review of The Unicorn Sonata, p. 1853; August, 1999, John Mort, review of Tamsin, p. 1984; August 1, 2000, Ray Olson, review of A Dance for Emilia, p. 2124; July 1, 2006, Ray Olson, review of The Line Between, p. 43; December 1, 2006, Ray Olson, review of The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version, p. 32; February 15, 2009, Ray Olson, review of We Never Talk about My Brother, p. 44; February 1, 2010, Ray Olson, review of Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle, p. 36; May 15, 2011, Rebecca Gerber, review of Sleight of Hand, p. 35; August 1, 2016, Nicole Foti, review of Summerlong, p. 51; January 1, 2017, Heather McCammond-Watts, review of In Calabria, p. 53; November 1, 2018, Frances Moritz, review of The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey, p. 32.
Commonweal, June 28, 1968, Harold Jaffe, review of A Fine and Private Place and The Last Unicorn, p. 447.
Denver Post, July 23, 2006, review of The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version, p. 12.
ForeWord, February 27, 2019, Meagan Logsdon, review of The Unicorn Anthology.
Holiday, December, 1964, Peter S. Beagle, “Good-bye to the Bronx”; August, 1965, Peter S. Beagle, “My Last Heroes.”
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2017, review of The Overneath; June 15, 2017, review of The New Voices of Fantasy; April 1, 2023, review of The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume 1: Lila the Werewolf and Other Stories; April 1, 2023, review of The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume 2: Oakland Dragon Blues and Other Stories.
Library Journal, September 15, 1996, Susan Hamburger, review of The Unicorn Sonata, p. 100; March 15, 2009, Charli Osborne, review of We Never Talk about My Brother, p. 101; March, 2023, Marlene Harris, review of The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn, p. 125; April, 2024, Andy Myers, review of I’m Afraid You Got Dragons, p. 79.
Locus, September, 1993, Gary K. Wolfe, review of The Innkeeper’s Song, pp. 23-24.
M2 Best Books, August 29, 2006, “Winners of the 2006 Hugo Awards Announced.”
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1, 2006, James Sallis, review of The Line Between, p. 48.
Mythlore, summer, 1989, John Pennington, “Innocence and Experience and the Imagination in the World of Peter Beagle,” pp. 10-16.
New York Times Book Review, June 5, 1962, Edmund Fuller, “Unique Recluse”; November 14, 1993, Gerald Jonas, review of The Innkeeper’s Song, p. 74; June 5, 2011, review of Sleight of Hand.
Publishers Weekly, August 5, 1986, review of The Unicorn Sonata, p. 430; August 9, 1999, review of Tamsin, p. 348; October 2, 2000, review of A Dance for Emilia, p. 63; July 10, 2006, review of The Line Between, p. 58; November 6, 2006, review of The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version, p. 40; February 9, 2009, review of We Never Talk about My Brother, p. 37; January 18, 2010, review of Mirror Kingdoms, p. 35; February 14, 2011, review of Sleight of Hand; July 18, 2016, review of Summerlong, p. 191; December 5, 2016, review of In Calabria, p. 54; February 27, 2023, review of The Way Home, p. 44; February 27, 2023, review of The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume 1, p. 44; March 11, 2024, review of I’m Afraid You Got Dragons, pp. 42+.
San Jose Studies, February, 1975, David Van Becker, “Time, Space, and Consciousness in the Fantasy of Peter S. Beagle.”
Saturday Evening Post, December, 1966, Peter S. Beagle, “On Being the Man of the House.”
Saturday Review, March 30, 1958, Rochelle Girson, review of The Last Unicorn, pp. 21-22; May 28, 1960, Granville Hicks, “Visit to a Happy Hunting Ground,” p. 18.
Today’s Health, October, 1974, Peter S. Beagle, “Kids and Kinkajous: The Special Blessing of Growing Up with Animals.”
Xpress Reviews, April 15, 2011, Charli Osborne, review of Sleight of Hand; April 5, 2019, Charli Osborne, review of The Unicorn Anthology.
World Literature Today, September-October, 2017, Brenda Peynado, review of The New Voices of Fantasy, p. 72.
ONLINE
Crescent City Book Views, http://crescentblues.com/ (December 6, 2001), Teri Smith, review of Tamsin.
Fantasy Online, http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/ (April 1, 2011), T.J. McIntyre, interview with Peter S. Beagle.
Green Man Review, http://www.greenmanreview.com/ (December 6, 2001), Naomi de Bruyn, review of A Dance for Emilia.
Infinity Plus, http://www.iplus.zetnet.co.uk/ (December 6, 2001), Nick Gevers, review of Tamsin.
JeanBookNerd, https://www.jeanbooknerd.com/ (April, 2023), author interview.
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (July 4, 2016), review of Summerlong.
Last Unicorn Website, http://utd500.utdallas.edu/ (November 1, 2001), Peter S. Beagle, commentary on The Last Unicorn; Marc Hairston, commentary on The Last Unicorn.
Los Angeles Public Library website, https://www.lapl.org/ (May 18, 2023), author interview.
Meg Elison, http://megelison.com/ (June 27, 2019), Meg Elison, “In Conversation with Peter S. Beagle.”
NPR.org, http://www.npr.org/ (February 16, 2017), Tasha Robinson, review of In Calabria.
Oakland Local, http://oaklandlocal.com/ (August 8, 2011), Susan Mernit, interview with Peter S. Beagle.
Oberon’s Law, http://oberonslaw.com/ (September 12, 2011), interview with Peter S. Beagle.
Peter S. Beagle website, http://www.peterbeagle.com (August 20, 2025).
Pop Mythology, https://www.popmythology.com/ (October 16, 2017), review of The Overneath.
Prime Time Replay, http://www.omnimag.com/ (October 3, 1996), Ed Bryant, interview with Peter S. Beagle for Omni Visions; Don Thompson, press release on The Unicorn Sonata.
Publishers Weekly Online, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (September 18, 2017), review of The Overneath.
Rising Shadow, https://www.risingshadow.net/ (September 1, 2016), review of Summerlong; (November 7, 2017), review of The Overneath.
SciFi.com, http://www.scifi.com/ (December 6, 2001), chat transcript from an interview with Peter S. Beagle.
Strange Horizons, http://www.strangehorizons.com/ (September 16, 2011), T.S. Miller, review of Sleight of Hand; (September 26, 2016), Stephen Case, review of Summerlong; (May 8, 2017), Christina Scholz, review of In Calabria.
Under the Covers, http://mtnimage.com/ (August 19, 1999), Harriet Klausner, review of Tamsin.
Weekend Edition Saturday, https://www.npr.org/ (May 18, 2024), Scott Simon, author interview.
Writer’s Digest, https://www.writersdigest.com/ (April 4, 2023), Robert Lee Brewer, author interview.
PETER S. BEAGLE – Noted author and screenwriter Peter Beagle is a recipient of the prestigious Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Mythopoeic Awards, and a World Fantasy and Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America 2018 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, among other literary achievements.
He has given generations of readers the magic of unicorns, haunted cemeteries, lascivious trees and disgruntled gods. A prolific author, his best-known work is The Last Unicorn, a fantasy novel, which Locus Magazine subscribers voted the number five “All-Time Best Fantasy Novel” in 1987. Fellow Hugo and Nebula-award-winning author Neil Gaiman has described Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place as his “I-wish-I’d-written-that first novel.”
In October 2020, The Last Unicorn was included in TIME’s “100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time,” a group of books that was compiled together with a panel of leading fantasy authors—N.K. Jemisin, Neil Gaiman, Sabaa Tahir, Tomi Adeyemi, Diana Gabaldon, George R.R. Martin, Cassandra Clare and Marlon James. TIME describes these books as “the most engaging, inventive and influential works of fantasy fiction, in chronological order beginning in the 9th century.”
Peter S. Beagle
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
Appearance hide
Text
Small
Standard
Large
Width
Standard
Wide
Color (beta)
Automatic
Light
Dark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peter S. Beagle
Beagle at a showing of The Last Unicorn in 2014
Beagle at a showing of The Last Unicorn in 2014
Born Peter Soyer Beagle
April 20, 1939 (age 86)
New York City, US
Occupation Novelist, screenwriter
Period 1960–present
Genre Fantasy
Notable works The Last Unicorn
Notable awards Hugo Award
2006
Nebula Award
2007
World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement
2011
Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award
2018
Peter Soyer Beagle (born April 20, 1939) is an American novelist and screenwriter, especially of fantasy fiction.[1] His best-known work is The Last Unicorn (1968) which Locus subscribers voted the number five "All-Time Best Fantasy Novel" in 1987.[2] During the last twenty-five years he has won several literary awards, including a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2011.[3] He was named Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master by SFWA in 2018.[4]
Early life
Beagle was born in Manhattan on April 20, 1939, the son of Simon Beagle and Rebecca Soyer. Three of his uncles were noted painters: Moses, Raphael, and Isaac Soyer.[5]
Beagle has said that The Wind in the Willows, a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, originally attracted him to the genre of fantasy.[6]
He is Jewish.[7]
Career
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Peter S. Beagle" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Beagle was raised in Bronx, New York, and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1955. He garnered early recognition from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, winning a scholarship to University of Pittsburgh for a poem he submitted as a high school senior. He went on to graduate from the university with a degree in creative writing. Following a year overseas, Beagle held the graduate Stegner Fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University, where he overlapped with Ken Kesey, Gurney Norman, and Larry McMurtry.
Beagle wrote his first novel, A Fine and Private Place, when he was 19 years old, following it with a memoir, I See by My Outfit, in 1965.
Beagle with the Inkpot Award at San Diego Comic-Con, 2006
He wrote an introduction for an American print edition of The Lord of the Rings. He and Chris Conkling co-wrote the screenplay for the 1978 Ralph Bakshi-animated version of The Lord of the Rings. Two decades later he wrote the teleplay for "Sarek", episode 71 of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
With David Carlson as composer Beagle adapted his story "Come, Lady Death" into the libretto for an opera, The Midnight Angel, which premiered at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 1993.[8]
In 2005, Beagle published a coda to The Last Unicorn, a novelette entitled "Two Hearts", and began work on a full-novel sequel. Two Hearts won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2006 and the parallel Nebula Award in 2007. It was also nominated as a short fiction finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Beagle also received a special Inkpot Award in 2006 for Outstanding Achievement in Science Fiction and Fantasy, and in 2007 the inaugural WSFA Small Press Award for "El Regalo", published in The Line Between (Tachyon Publications).[3]
He is also a winner of the Jack Trevor Story Cup, also known as the Prix du Goncourt, awarded to an outstanding humorous writer.[citation needed]
Beagle in 2006
IDW Publishing released a six-issue comic book adaptation of The Last Unicorn beginning in April 2010. The collected hardcover edition was released in January 2011, premiering at #2 on the New York Times Hardcover Graphic Novel bestseller list.
Beagle's 2009 collection of short fiction, We Never Talk About My Brother, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award.[3]
In 2013, he collaborated with the musician Phildel on a new track "Dark Water Down", mixing poetry and music. They then appeared together at a gig at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco.[9]
Dispute with Granada media
Beagle's book The Last Unicorn was made into an animated film of the same name in 1982, based on a screenplay written by Beagle himself. In 1979, Beagle had a contract with ITC Entertainment, which entitled Beagle to 5% of the net profits in the animated property, and 5% of the gross revenues from any film-related merchandising. Since 1999 this film has been controlled by a British company, Granada Media International (a subsidiary of ITV plc).
From 2003 through 2011, Beagle was involved in a financial dispute with Granada over nonpayment of contractually due profit and merchandising shares. On July 29, 2011, Beagle announced at his Otakon appearance that he and ITV had reached an agreement that was beneficial to all parties, and should please fans of The Last Unicorn. On October 14, 2011, at his New York Comic Con appearance, he announced the first results of the deal.[citation needed]
Dispute with Connor Cochran
Beagle sued his former manager Connor Cochran in 2015 for $52 million. The Alameda County Superior Court judge Michael M. Markman found Cochran liable for financial elder abuse, fraud, and breach of fiduciary duty, awarding Beagle $325,000, as well as an additional $7500 for defamation, and an undetermined amount in attorney's fees.[10]
Cochran declared bankruptcy sixteen hours before the trial was due to begin. Beagle was unable to collect the money Cochran owed, and the rights to Beagle's work were left in legal limbo. In February 2021, Beagle regained the intellectual property rights.[11]
Bibliography
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (November 2020)
Novels and chapbooks
Beagle talking to readers in Rochester, Minnesota in 2014
A Fine and Private Place, 1960 (novel)
The Last Unicorn, 1968 (novel)
Lila the Werewolf, 1974 (chapbook edition of 1969 novelette[12])
The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle, 1978 (omnibus collection including A Fine and Private Place, The Last Unicorn, Come Lady Death, and Lila the Werewolf)
The Folk of the Air, 1986 (novel, currently being rewritten and expanded for new release)
The Innkeeper's Song, 1993 (novel)
The Unicorn Sonata, 1996 (young adult novel, currently being rewritten and expanded into a 4-book series)
Tamsin, 1999 (novel)
A Dance for Emilia, 2000 (hardcover giftbook edition of novella) (Illustrated by Anne Yvonne Gilbert)
Your Friendly Neighborhood Magician: Songs and Early Poems, 2006 (limited edition chapbook collection of song lyrics and poetry) (Tachyon Publications)
The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version, 2007 (original novella-length draft, from Subterranean Press)
Strange Roads, 2008 (3-story chapbook collaboration with Lisa Snellings-Clark for Dreamhaven Books)
Return, 2010 (limited edition novella chapbook, Subterranean Press)
Two Hearts, 2011 (unpublished limited edition chapbook of Hugo Award and Nebula Award-winning novelette sequel to The Last Unicorn)
Summerlong,[13] 2016, Tachyon Publications
In Calabria,[14] February 2017 (novella)
The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey,[15] November 2018 (finished version of the original The Last Unicorn)
I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons, May 2024[16]
As editor
Peter S. Beagle's Immortal Unicorn, 1995 (co-editor, original story anthology, split into two volumes when reprinted in paperback: Peter S. Beagle's Immortal Unicorn in 1998, and Peter S. Beagle's Immortal Unicorn 2 in 1999)
The Secret History of Fantasy,[17] 2010 (anthology from Tachyon Publications)
The Urban Fantasy Anthology,[18] 2011 (with Joe R. Lansdale)
The New Voices of Fantasy,[19] 2017 (with Jacob Weisman)
The Unicorn Anthology, 2019 (with Jacob Weisman)
Short fiction
Collections
Giant Bones, 1997 (original stories set in the world of The Innkeeper's Song); reissued in 1999 as The Magician of Karakosk and Other Stories
The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances, 1997
The Line Between, 2006
Strange Roads, 2008
We Never Talk About My Brother, 2009, Tachyon Publications
Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle, 2010 (Subterranean Press, edited by Jonathan Strahan)
Sleight of Hand, 2011, Tachyon Publications
The Overneath,[20] 2017, Tachyon Publications
The Way Home,[21] 2023, Penguin Random House
Non-fiction
I See By My Outfit: Cross-Country by Scooter, an Adventure, 1965 (nonfiction)
The California Feeling, 1969 (with photographer Michael Bry, nonfiction)
American Denim, 1975 (nonfiction art book)
The Lady and Her Tiger, 1976 (with Pat Derby, nonfiction)
The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1982 (nonfiction art book)
In the Presence of the Elephants, 1995 (nonfiction photo book)
The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances, 1997 (collection of fiction and nonfiction essays)
Audiobooks
These five audiobooks are unabridged readings by Beagle, except the first, which is abridged. Giant Bones is a collection of short fiction; the others are novels.
The Last Unicorn, abridged (1990 cassette)
A Fine and Private Place (2002 CD and cassette)
Giant Bones (2002 CD & cassette)
Tamsin (2002 CD and cassette)
The Last Unicorn (2005 download), with original music by Jeff Slingluff[22]
Screenplays
The Dove, 1974
The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened, 1977
The Lord of the Rings, 1978
The Last Unicorn, 1982
"Sarek" episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, 1990
A Whale of a Tale, pilot episode for a TV serial adaptation of The Little Mermaid, 1992
Camelot, 1998
A Tale of Egypt, 1998
Discography
Peter Beagle Live!, Firebird Arts & Music, 1991, FAM-11008/UPC 0-4720-11008-4-9
Awards
Source: The Locus Index to SF Awards[3]
These are annual "best of the year" literary awards, with three exceptions (‡).
1987 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, The Folk of the Air
1994 Locus Award, Fantasy Novel, The Innkeeper's Song
2000 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, Adult, Tamsin
2004 Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, Nouvelle étrangère, Le rhinocéros qui citait Nietzsche
That is, best foreign-language short fiction published July 2002 to June 2003, for the French edition (Gallimard, 2002, ISBN 9782070421473) of The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances (1997)[23]
2006 ‡ Inkpot Award (comics), Special citation[24]
2006 Hugo Award, Novelette, "Two Hearts"
2007 Nebula Award, Novelette, "Two Hearts"
2007 WSFA Small Press Award (short fiction), "El Regalo"
2010 Locus Award, Novelette, "By Moonlight"
2011 ‡ World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement
2018 ‡ Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award[4]
In 1987, Locus ranked The Last Unicorn number five among the 33 all-time best fantasy novels, based on a poll of subscribers.[2] The 1998 rendition of the poll considered many book series as single entries and ranked The Last Unicorn number 18.[25]
Peter S Beagle
(Peter Soyer Beagle)
USA flag (b.1939)
Peter S. Beagle is the internationally bestselling and much-beloved author of numerous classic fantasy novels and collections, including The Last Unicorn, A Fine & Private Place, The Overneath, The Line Between, Sleight of Hand, Summerlong, and In Calabria. Beagle is the recipient of the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, World Fantasy, and Locus awards, as well as the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. He is the editor of The Secret History of Fantasy and the co-editor of The Urban Fantasy Anthology. Beagle lives in Richmond, California, where he is working on too many projects to even begin to name.
Awards: Nebula (2017), WFA (2011), Hugo (2006), Mythopoeic (2000) see all
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
Series
Last Unicorn
The Last Unicorn (1968)
The Lost Version (2007)
The First Last Unicorn and Other Beginnings (2012)
The Lost Journey (2018)
The Way Home (2023)
thumbthumbthumbthumb
thumb
Essential Peter S. Beagle
1. Lila the Werewolf and Other Stories (2023)
2. Oakland Dragon Blues and Other Stories (2023)
thumbthumb
Novels
A Fine and Private Place (1960)
The Folk of the Air (1986)
The Innkeeper's Song (1993)
The Unicorn Sonata (1996)
Tamsin (1999)
Sweet Lightning (2008)
I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons (2008)
Summerlong (2016)
In Calabria (2017)
thumbthumbthumbthumb
thumbno image availablethumbthumb
thumb
Collections
Giant Bones (1996)
aka The Magician of Karakosk and Other Stories
The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances (1997)
The Line Between (2006)
Strange Roads (2008)
We Never Talk About My Brother (2009)
Mirror Kingdoms (2010)
Sleight of Hand (2011)
The Overneath (2017)
thumbthumbthumbthumb
thumbthumbthumbthumb
Novellas and Short Stories
Lila, the Werewolf (1974)
The Magician of Karakosk (1996)
A Dance for Emilia (2000)
Gordon the Self-Made Cat (2006)
Return (2010)
The Karkadann Triangle (2018) (with Patricia A McKillip)
thumbno image availablethumbthumb
thumbthumb
Anthologies edited
Peter S Beagle's Immortal Unicorn 2 (1995) (with Janet Berliner)
Peter S Beagle's Immortal Unicorn (1995) (with Janet Berliner and Martin H Greenberg)
The Secret History of Fantasy (2010)
The Urban Fantasy Anthology (2011) (with Joe R Lansdale)
The New Voices of Fantasy (2017) (with Jacob Weisman)
The Unicorn Anthology (2019) (with Jacob Weisman)
thumbthumbthumbthumb
thumbthumb
Series contributed to
Tor.Com Original
The Story of Kao Yu (2016)
thumb
Non fiction hide
I See By My Outfit (1965)
The California Feeling (1969)
American Denim (1975)
The Lady and Her Tiger (1976) (with Pat Derby)
The Garden of Earthly Delights (1982)
In the Presence of Elephants (1995)
Something to Be Learned (2006)
thumbthumbthumbthumb
thumbthumbthumb
Omnibus editions hide
The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle (1978)
A Fine and Private Place / The Last Unicorn (2003)
Peter S. Beagle on his new novel, the hero's journey, and why villains talk so much
May 18, 20248:02 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday
Headshot of Scott Simon
Scott Simon
5-Minute Listen
Transcript
A reluctant hero's quest, a can-do princess, and an evil wizard who just can not shut up: NPR's Scott Simon talks with Peter S. Beagle about his new novel, "I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons."
Sponsor Message
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Something big threatens the kingdom of Bellemontagne - many somethings, which prefer their humans roasted. The new novel "I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons" is about that threat and also about reluctant heroes and an evildoer who just can't keep his yap shut. It's by Peter S. Beagle, who celebrated for his 1968 novel "The Last Unicorn," which, of course, charmed generations of young and not-so-young readers. Peter S. Beagle joins us from Berkeley, Calif. Thanks so much for being with us.
PETER BEAGLE: It's a pleasure, truly, to be here.
SIMON: Tell us about the dragons in the kingdom and the surrounding kingdoms. Come in all shapes and sizes, don't they?
BEAGLE: Well, in the world of the heroes, dragons mostly have shrunk down. Only the forest folk vaguely remember the really big ones. Mostly, the hero himself is an eliminator of dragons. Dragons are like cockroaches, are like small animals you can't get rid of. And it's his job to clear them out. He hates doing it. He's always hated it.
SIMON: Yeah. We should explain your hero is - forgive me any mispronunciation - Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus...
BEAGLE: Gabalus. Heliogabalus.
SIMON: ...Thrax. But we can call him Robert, right?
BEAGLE: He'd really prefer it.
SIMON: Does he feel a kinship with dragons?
BEAGLE: Yes, and he doesn't know why. Much of the time, he doesn't want to think about it. It's nothing that he wants to know. That's true for most of the characters in this book. The princess doesn't want to be a princess.
SIMON: Princess Cerise. Yeah.
BEAGLE: Prince Reginald doesn't particularly want to be a prince. What he mostly wants to do is go off somewhere where his father can't bother him and just lie in the grass and think about things and get drunk. That would be nice.
SIMON: (Laughter) What makes a hero? This is a subject you've returned to in your novels.
BEAGLE: Well, in my own experience, there are very few heroic deeds I've gotten through in my life. And each time, I didn't want to do it. I knew exactly what I had to do, and I did not want to do it. And so I understand Robert. I understand his position altogether too well.
SIMON: Let me ask you about the wizard in the book 'cause he can't keep his yap shut about what he's hellbent on doing. Why is that?
BEAGLE: Well, you can't possibly blame him. After all, he has been destroyed and come back. He has ridden with dragons. He knows so much about dragons, just not the important stuff. But because of his experience, he thinks he knows more than he does. And that's fatal. I know that myself.
SIMON: That's happened to you?
BEAGLE: It has. It has. Not with dragons, particularly.
SIMON: Yeah.
BEAGLE: But with everything from the English language to automobile engines. Yeah, it's happened.
SIMON: It's been 56 years since "The Last Unicorn."
BEAGLE: Boy, that was quick.
SIMON: How does that feel?
BEAGLE: Very strange some nights when I lie in bed and think about it. And at my age, I do think about those things. The main thing is, I don't know if I've done my best work yet. You always hope there's something beyond what you've done. What worries me about this book is that I like it. I never like books when I'm through with them. I always know what I've screwed up. And by the time I've figured that out, the book is already published. There's nothing to do, but go back and do the next one. With this one, "I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons," I actually like it. I've asked friends, will somebody please tell me how I've screwed this one up? So far, nobody has.
SIMON: I liked it. I don't think you screwed up anything.
BEAGLE: Maybe. Well, I'm old enough. Maybe I finally got away with it.
SIMON: (Laughter) Can fantasies help us get hold of the real world all around us?
BEAGLE: In a strange way, it's the only way I've ever gotten hold of the real world. In honesty, much of the time, I'm faking it. Maybe other people are. But mostly, that's what I do. I only know how to tell stories. Everything else I've just done the best I could. I raised children. I've held one or two jobs, but I've always known I'm supposed to tell stories. That's it. And the best I can do is tell them the best I can. Beyond that, at my age, I've gotten very good at pretending I know what I'm doing. Sometimes I even believe it myself.
SIMON: You're in your 80s, right?
BEAGLE: Eight-five as a week or so ago.
SIMON: Happy birthday.
BEAGLE: Thank you.
SIMON: You know, there are millions of readers all over the world who want to say thank you to you.
BEAGLE: I hope so. They write to me letters, and I'm very grateful. I always answer the letters.
SIMON: I must say this book has totally changed the way I think of dragons.
BEAGLE: Good, because it changed mine. Rather, I've always thought about dragons. Somebody did write to me wishing I had told more about dragons. Maybe I will another day. But right now, I'm glad I was able to say as much as I did.
SIMON: Peter S. Beagle, his new novel "I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons." Thank you so very much for being with us.
BEAGLE: It's been a great pleasure, more than I can tell you.
Interview With an Author: Peter S. BeagleDaryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch Library, Thursday, May 18, 2023
Author Peter S. Beagle and his two collections of short fiction, The Essential Peter S. Beagle Volumes 1 & 2
Author Peter S. Beagle and his two collections of short fiction, The Essential Peter S. Beagle Volumes 1 & 2
Peter Soyer Beagle is the internationally bestselling and much-beloved author of numerous classic fantasy novels and collections, including The Last Unicorn, Tamsin, The Line Between, Sleight of Hand, Summerlong, In Calabria, and The Overneath. He is the editor of The Secret History of Fantasy and the co-editor of The Urban Fantasy Anthology. Beagle published his first novel, A Fine and Private Place, at nineteen, while still completing his degree in creative writing. Beagle’s follow-up, The Last Unicorn, is widely considered one of the great works of fantasy. He has written widely for both stage and screen, including the screenplay adaptations for The Last Unicorn, the animated film of The Lord of the Rings, and the well-known "Sarek" episode of Star Trek. As one of the fantasy genre’s most-lauded authors, Beagle has received the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, and Locus Awards, as well as the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. He has also been honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award and the Comic-Con International Inkpot Award. In 2017, he was named 34th Damon Knight Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association for his contributions to fantasy and science fiction. Beagle lives in Richmond, California. He has recently created two collections of his short fiction, The Essential Peter S. Beagle Volumes 1, & 2, and he recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.
What inspired you to collect some of your short fiction into The Essential Peter S. Beagle Volumes 1 & 2?
In all honesty, that was my publisher’s idea. I had no idea how many stories I’d written! Novels take me so long that I’m always amazed to discover how many stories I’ve written in between. There are a lot of other stories, but these are a good sampling.
What was your process for putting together this collection? How did you decide which of your stories would be included?
I really don’t remember those decisions. My publisher handled everything.
What are your plans for this series? Will there be additional volumes?
Right now, I’m too busy worrying about the novel I’m working on. So maybe I’ll take a break to think about stories again before it’s finished, but I’m not sure.
You wrote the story and teleplay for the third season episode, "Sarek" of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Are you a Star Trek fan? Do you have a favorite series? A favorite character? A favorite episode (beyond your own)?
I like Star Trek. I knew some of the actors, to one degree or another, particularly René Auberjonois who I really liked. I also had an enormous crush on Nichelle Nichols, and I still do. She kissed me!
You’ve done a lot of different types of work (novels, short stories, graphic novels, screenwriting, writing and developing for television, just to name a few). Is there a format that you prefer over the others?
For me, novels are the most fun, because it takes me forever to find out what I’m doing. I’m always wrong. It’s the way Snoopy writes novels: “It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a shot rang out. A maidservant screamed. A pirate ship appeared on the horizon. Meanwhile, in far-off Kansas, a boy was growing up.” Then Snoopy looks into the camera, and says “in the second half, I pull all this together.” That’s how I write.
Is there something you haven’t done yet but are hoping to have the opportunity to try?
I’d love to write the book and lyrics for a musical.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
At the moment, it’s the second Flashman book (Royal Flash) and the autobiography of Curt Siodmak.
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
There were a number of them; it’s hard to pick just one. Let’s go with The Wind in the Willows for today. I can see the cover in my head, and I can still quote it. That’s a book that definitely affected my life, because I wanted to do that.
Was there a book you felt you needed to hide from your parents?
There was nothing that I hid from my parents. They had all the books. I grew up in my parent’s living room, and nothing was forbidden to me.
Is there a book you've faked reading?
No, there are a lot of books I haven’t read that I still hope to get to, but I haven’t faked any.
Can you name a book you've bought for the cover?
No, I never really look at the cover.
Is there a book that changed your life?
There are a lot of them. Recently, considering that I grew up with legends about golems and jinni, Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Jinni is one.
Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?
Tropic of Night, by Michael Gruber. If I could write like Michael Gruber, I would. The book is the scariest thing I’ve read in years, but it’s more than that. It’s about all the things we believe that aren’t so.
What is the last piece of art (music, movies, tv, more traditional art forms) that you've experienced or that has impacted you?
I loved the movie The Shape of Water. So much tumbles through my head when I think about that.
What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?
These days, there’d be a lot of napping involved! Other than that, it would be any place in Europe where my Nell would come to meet me.
What is the question that you’re always hoping you’ll be asked, but never have been? What is your answer?
Nobody ever asks where Molly Grue came from. That’s actually a good thing, because I don’t know; I just know that I’m profoundly grateful. No Molly, no book.
Peter S. Beagle Interview - The Way Home
7:00 AM JBN, Jean Book Nerd, Peter S. Beagle Interview - The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn 3 comments
Photo Content from Peter S. Beagle
PETER S. BEAGLE – Noted author and screenwriter Peter Beagle is a recipient of the prestigious Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Mythopoeic Awards, and a World Fantasy and Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America 2018 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, among other literary achievements.
He has given generations of readers the magic of unicorns, haunted cemeteries, lascivious trees and disgruntled gods. A prolific author, his best-known work is The Last Unicorn, a fantasy novel, which Locus Magazine subscribers voted the number five “All-Time Best Fantasy Novel” in 1987. Fellow Hugo and Nebula-award-winning author Neil Gaiman has described Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place as his “I-wish-I’d-written-that first novel.”
In October 2020, The Last Unicorn was included in TIME’s “100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time,” a group of books that was compiled together with a panel of leading fantasy authors—N.K. Jemisin, Neil Gaiman, Sabaa Tahir, Tomi Adeyemi, Diana Gabaldon, George R.R. Martin, Cassandra Clare and Marlon James. TIME describes these books as “the most engaging, inventive and influential works of fantasy fiction, in chronological order beginning in the 9th century.”
Greatest thing you learned at school.
How to get out of class
Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
Meeting other creative people who are *really* good.
Why is storytelling so important for all of us?
Stories make sense when nothing else in the world does.
Can you tell us when you started THE WAY HOME, how that came about?
I started it about 15 years ago, which means it was too long ago to remember HOW it started. But I know how it ends, so that's fine.
What was the most surprising thing you learned in creating your characters?
I was wrong about them! They didn't tell me the most important part of their lives, so I had to go back and fix things.
Meet the Characters of THE WAY HOME:
SOOZ — our heroine, whom we have met before at 9 years old. Now 18, she is off to find her long-lost sister, who she has never known.
JENIA — the sister Sooz never knew, who grew up in the world of the Dreamies, always trying to believe she belonged in that world, knowing deep down that she didn't.
THE DREAMIES — they appear to be human, but aren't. They stay in their self-contained world, except when that rare human comes into contact, which will cause a stir.
THE KING & QUEEN OF THE DREAMIES — they found that Jenia was stolen and would send her back, except she doesn't seem to want to go home...
What was your favorite subject when you were in school?
English, as it gave me an excuse to read.
What is the weirdest thing you have seen in someone else's home?
Live animals (like lions, goats, and the occasional skunk) freely wandering through Pat Derby's home.
What is your most memorable travel experience?
Encountering a large, strange creature under a rock, while swimming in the South Pacific. He was not at all afraid of me (didn't have to be) but I looked into his eyes, and got out of there as quickly as I could. Backwards.
Peter S. Beagle: On Ideas Changing Over Time
Internationally beloved and acclaimed author Peter S. Beagle discusses the process of writing his new fantasy novel, The Way Home.
Robert Lee Brewer
Published Apr 4, 2023 12:00 PM EDT
Peter S. Beagle was born in 1939 and raised in the Bronx, just a few blocks from Woodlawn Cemetery, the inspiration for his first novel, A Fine and Private Place. He is the author of classic works such as The Last Unicorn, Tamsin, and The Innkeeper’s Song, and his novels have earned him many millions of fans around the world.
In addition to stories and novels, Beagle has written numerous teleplays and screenplays, including the animated versions of The Lord of the Rings and The Last Unicorn. His nonfiction book I See By My Outfit is considered a classic of American travel writing; and he is also a gifted poet, lyricist, and singer/songwriter. Find him on Facebook and Instagram.
Peter S. Beagle
In this post, Peter discusses the process of writing his new fantasy novel, The Way Home, his advice for writers, and more!
Name: Peter S. Beagle
Literary agent: Howard Morhaim
Book Title: The Way Home
Publisher: Penguin Random House (in the US)
Release date: April 4, 2023
Genre/category: Fantasy
Previous titles: The Last Unicorn, A Fine and Private Place, Innkeeper's Song, Tamsin, and many more
Elevator pitch: Years after the events of her last adventure, Sooz finds a perilous journey lies ahead of her, in a story that is at once a tender meditation on love and loss, and a lesson in finding your true self.
Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]
What prompted you to write this book?
There is always more to tell, and Sooz's story wasn't fully over.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication?
About 15 years.
Did the idea change during the process?
Always. This always happens. The ideas that I had at the beginning were not the same as the ones five years or 10 years into the process. I found I had to go back and redo large parts of the story, because the characters were not right the first go round.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Always. Why else would I bother writing? Writing is always a process of discovery.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
An escape from the world of the newspaper headlines and the scrolling newsreel which keeps beating them down every moment.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
I very rarely know what the hell I'm doing artistically—I've just gotten a lot better than I used to be at pretending I always knew.
When speaking to an audience, I often fall back on my favorite "Charlie Brown" cartoon strip, the one that has Snoopy sitting on his doghouse roof writing a novel. "It was a dark and stormy night! Suddenly a shot rang out! A maid-servant screamed! A pirate ship appeared on the horizon! Meanwhile...in far-off Kansas, a boy was growing up!" Then he turns directly to the viewer and explains his method: "In the second half, I pull all this together!"
That's pretty much the way I write. People very rarely believe me.
In Conversation with Peter S. Beagle
Posted on June 27, 2019 by Meg Elison
The difference between listening to a good author speak and a great author is not what you’d expect. It isn’t how witty they are– writers are often witty folk. It isn’t how good their stories are– most writers are also good storytellers, and that’s the reason people show up to bookstores in the first place.
It’s the ratio.
A good author talks mostly about themselves, their own work, muses about their legacy, holds forth about their process. A great author will always talk about the work of others. They’ll give you names and titles of the books that made them, that shape their thinking, that make them want to put the book down and seriously consider whether they should get into another line of work.
That was Peter S. Beagle, all night. I got to interview him at a live event at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, and talk to him over dinner and on the ride home besides. Throughout all our conversations, both public and private, he spilled over with stories and books and names of other people who he thought were indispensable to the craft or to genre. From a long paean to T.H. Lawrence to a sharp recommendation that everyone in the room read “Mistress of the Art of Death” by Ariana Franklin, Beagle was constantly working to share the spotlight, even as we called him a celebrated legend and the reason so many of us got into fantasy.
It was so easy to see his spell encircle the room as he told his stories about unicorns, Christopher Lee, the love of his life, Elijah, his mother, writing for Star Trek, and his time at Stanford with gratitude and grace. I had very little work to do, as an interview partner. If I pointed Beagle down an avenue of memory, he’d stroll it at a leisurely pace, offering vignettes and conjured-up quotes from James Earl Jones for the delight of an audience hearing the voice of Darth Vader in their heads. I saw adults of all ages lean forward in their seats, elbows on their knees, utterly charmed and hanging on his every word. We could have danced all night.
I went through agonies at dinner, listening to Beagle talk about his Stegner fellowship and friendship with Larry McMurtry at the green end of both their careers. He casually mentioned that Ken Kesey was there, too, and that the two of them pursued some of the same partners.
“Peter,” I said. “Save some of this for when we have an audience, please. This is too good.”
But it was all too good. His stories to the full house at Kepler’s were just as wondrous and strange, and I was thrilled to get him to talk about my favorite of his books, “Summerlong.” I asked him some personal stuff while people were listening. Whether he’d been in love with someone who came in and out of his life like a season. Whether he wrote so lyrically from a heart that was broken or made whole. He answered that and every other thing with openness and a deep, trembling, wonderful candor. It was a charmed evening.
I watched him sign books for a line of people who were limited to three apiece, and so more than half of them went to the back of the line to take another turn. I saw him shake hands and receive praise, sign ancient, crumbling copies of “The Last Unicorn” and hear again and again without fatigue what it had meant to people. I saw him record a personal video greeting for a man’s three granddaughters, take selfies, and remember the names of old friends when they were mentioned to him.
Through all of this, he handed people off to his publisher at Tachyon, Jacob Weisman. “This guy did all the work,” he told them about their collection, “The Unicorn Anthology.” The ratio was still running. Beagle couldn’t wait to give credit away, or to tell people that he really heard them and felt it when they explained how much his books had touched them.
On the long drive back to San Francisco, Beagle did it again. He told some of his best stories with his mic off, with no one but the Weismans and myself around to hear. Vonda McIntyre told him to make friends with Harlan Ellison by offering “vicious and personal” insults to the famously irascible author as often as possible. This, apparently, yielded a lifelong friendship. A thousand other stories like this, with names you’d know. Some I can tell and some I cannot. The hour was late and we were all buzzing with the exhaustion that dogs the heels of an evening well-spent.
I grew up reading these people, thinking of them as demigods of creation. I have had the pleasure of meeting a few of these people whose names I knew from pressing my fingertips to the spines of their books at the library, as images of who I wanted to be, as legends.
They’re people, in the end, and not all of them are charming. When people say don’t meet your heroes, they don’t mean don’t go to the bookstore. They mean you should expect a person, not a perfect projection of all you hoped they’d be. Beagle is just a person. But that numinous, glowing haze overtook the evening, despite all I know about the danger of investing people with the qualities I want to see in a role model. I was enspelled. We all were.
The best story of the night actually did take place on the stage. I attempted the tricky maneuver of asking an author where to find him in his own work: whether in Schmendrick or Jonathan Rebeck or Sarek… and none of my guesses were right. We never are. Authors are too good at cutting themselves into pieces and sewing everything together to get caught.
But Beagle did answer.
He said he’s the butterfly in “The Last Unicorn.” If you haven’t read it, you might have seen the movie when you were a kid. The butterfly speaks in other people’s words, always. He’s full of odds and ends of verse, bits of songs and nonsense. He’s trying to make himself understood by telling you who he’s read. He’s using the ratio.
“That’s me,” Beagle said, turning his storyteller’s voice away from the crowd and back to me alone. His wet eyes were magnetic, and I was locked. “I’m the butterfly. Don’t listen to me; listen to me.”
I heard him. I hear him still.
Beagle, Peter S. THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY Tachyon (Adult Fiction) $16.95 8, 8 ISBN: 978-1-61696-257-9
A companion piece of sorts to Beagle's critically acclaimed anthology, The Secret History of Fantasy (2010)--a collection of stories that transcended the conventions and clichés of contemporary fantasy--Beagle and Weisman's latest contains 19 comparable stories from some of the genre's most innovative and exciting new voices.Although most of the authors included here may not be household names like the ones in the earlier collection (which featured works from Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Octavia E. Butler, among others), the quality of the stories is undeniable. Also undeniable is the impressive diversity of storylines, which range from the whimsy of Ben Loory's "The Duck," about a bird who falls hopelessly in love with a rock, to the horror of Carmen Maria Machado's Nebula Award-nominated "The Husband Stitch," a darkly lyrical and deeply disturbing look at a woman with a penchant for storytelling whose life becomes a twisted tale. E. Lily Yu's "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" is particularly memorable. A political fable that works on multiple levels, it chronicles a conflict between a nest of imperialistic wasps and a colony of peaceful bees. A few young bees begin questioning the violent new world order and plot rebellion. Other standout selections include "Tornado's Siren" by Brooke Bolander, a love story featuring a tornado and a girl, and Alyssa Wong's Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning "Hungry Daughters and Starving Mothers," which puts an innovative twist on the vampire mythos with a story about a young woman who, after realizing she can find sustenance consuming people's thoughts, becomes addicted to eating the darkest. While all 19 pieces are exceptional, the anthology's title is a bit of a misnomer; some stories were originally published as far back as 2012. A stellar anthology that proves not only that fantasy is alive and well, but that it will be for years to come.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Beagle, Peter S.: THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A495428040/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=501fdb28. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
The New Voices of Fantasy . Ed. Peter S. Beagle & Jacob Weisman. San Francisco. Tachyon. 2017. 336 pages.
The New Voices of Fantasy , edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman, promises the reader exposure to the next generation of fantasy writers. These eighteen stories and one novella feature writers already known for being strong new voices of fantasy, like Sofia Samatar, and others, like Brooke Bolander, who've only published a handful of stories. Each is a shining example of the genre, featuring gorgeous sentences, images that stick in the mind, and heartbreaking loss. Readers of both fantasy and literary fabulism will appreciate this anthology.
These new voices deal just as easily with contemporary times, worlds similar to our own, modern sensibilities, and futuristic details like space suits and real estate guides as with the folktale roots of fantasy. Technology, capitalism, and fantasy can comfortably coexist. One of my favorites, "The Husband Stitch," by Carmen Maria Machado, harks back to the gender horror of old fairy tales while set in contemporary times. "The Pauper and the Eucalyptus Jinn," by Usman T. Malik, the most stellar work in the anthology, follows an immigrants return home to Pakistan to investigate a mystery of family lore, uncovering a secret guarded by a jinn. In "A Kiss with Teeth," by Max Gladstone, Vlad the Impaler gets a suburban dad update.
Any anthology, especially one trying to predict the future, is bound to fail. There are always deserving authors left out, like Sabrina Vourvoulias and Seth Dickinson, authors who've written excellent and leading books of the genre, to name just a few, and writers on the literary side who might also come to define the future of fantasy. As the boundaries of fantasy have shifted and blurred, many of the stories included here could easily be included in an anthology of fabulism or magical realism.
As a predictive text for who will write the blockbuster fantasies of the next decade, only time will tell. As a survey of the field of what new fantasy looks like now, this collection shows an excellent range of emerging writers, sure to be complemented by anthologies like The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy .
Brenda Peynado
University of Central Florida
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Peynado, Brenda. "The New Voices of Fantasy." World Literature Today, vol. 91, no. 5, Sept.-Oct. 2017, p. 72. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A502351928/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e73022ca. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
* The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey.
By Peter S. Beagle.
Nov. 2018.166p. Tachyon, $19.95 (9781616963088).
Fifty years ago, the first edition of The Last Unicorn was published; the legend of a unicorn searching for her kind has filled readers' hearts for decades. This commemorative hardcover edition is the first draft of what would eventually become Beagle's best-known work, written as the author was desperately trying not to write a fantasy novel. His afterword recounts the history behind this beloved tale, preceded by personal reminiscences from best-selling fantasy authors Carrie Vaughn (Bannerless, 2017) and Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind, 2007). The story itself begins when the unicorn encounters a dragon in her forest, and because the hatred between their kinds is absolute, they must always fight to the death. Except this dragon is crying, dismayed by the modern world and injured by having a coach run over his tail. The unicorn learns from the dragon that she may be the last of her kind and sets off on her quest to find others. Soon, she meets her questing companion, a demon with a split personality who has been evicted from hell. Fans will want to witness the evolution into the original.--Frances Moritz
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Moritz, Frances. "The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 5, 1 Nov. 2018, p. 32. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A562369626/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1ec266bc. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
* The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Vol. 1: Lila the Werewolf and Other Stories
Peter S. Beagle. Tachyon, $28.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-61696-388-0
With this impressive collections of 13 fantasy shorts, Beagle (The Overneath) showcases his versatility and ability to entertain even as he challenges expectations. While a handful of offerings, including "Lila the Werewolf (1969) and "Come Lady Death" (1963), stem from Beagle's early years, the majority represent his post-2000 output, demonstrating that his skills have only been refined over the decades. With a tendency toward gentle thoughtfulness and philosophical rumination, tales such as "Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros" and "Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel" prove timeless in their quiet yet profound exploration of Jewish faith, friendship, family, and fellowship. Others, like "The Stickball Witch" and "Four Fables," drift into absurdity or everyday uneasiness, while "We Never Talk About My Brother" looks at the balance between good and evil in a new light. Jane Yolen's introduction helps place Beagle and his work in context. The result is both an ideal entry point for newcomers and a lovely way for existing fans to revisit or rediscover old favorites. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary. (Apr.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Vol. 1: Lila the Werewolf and Other Stories." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 9, 27 Feb. 2023, p. 44. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A739891226/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=84213f62. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
* The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of the Last Unicorn
Peter S. Beagle. Ace, $27 (208p) ISBN 978-0-593-54739-7
Beagle revisits the magical landscape of his most famous work in these two breathtaking novellas, "Two Hearts," a Hugo Award winner originally published in 2006, and its heartbreaking sequel "Sooz," which is original to this volume. Narrator Sooz is nine in "Two Hearts" when a malignant griffin lands and nests in Midnight Wood neat her home. Sooz sets out to ask King Lir for help defeating the beast, aided by two mysterious riders familiar to Beagle's fans: Schmendtick the magician and his companion Molly Grue. Together they find Lir, and poignantly rouse him from old age and fatigue, recruiting both him and his beloved Unicorn to slay the griffin. Eight years later, in "Sooz," the now 17-year-old heroine seeks the sister she never knew she had who was kidnapped by the fairies as a baby, Upon entering the land of the fae, she is raped by four men but befriends a woman of stone who comes to her aid in the aftermath. This new friend is on a quest of her own; she's looking for Uncle Death. In teaching their goals, Sooz learns that the people who have changed her life will stick with her, even after they'te gone. With beautiful wotldbuilding and tons of heart, these tender fantasies are sure to delight. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary. (Apr.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of the Last Unicorn." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 9, 27 Feb. 2023, p. 44. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A739891225/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=219bb564. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
Beagle, Peter S. The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn. Ace: Berkley. Apr. 2023. 224p. ISBN 9780593547397. $27. FANTASY
This collection, set in the world of the author's fantasy classic The Last Unicorn, serves as a coda to that beloved story. Of the two novellas in this book, the first (the previously published Two Hearts) won both the Hugo and the Nebula for bringing back Schmendrick the Magician and Molly Grue in their journey to escort a now elderly King Lir from his castle to save a young girl's village from a terrible monster, giving him one last bright and glorious day in the sun. The second story, the previously unpublished Sooz, carries on the tradition of this magical world by taking the girl whom Lir rescued in Two Hearts and giving her a story of her own, a tale of changelings, lost sisterhood, and the terrible price that the fae enact for the children they steal, and especially for the ones they want to keep. VERDICT A lovely duology that invokes the charm of The Last Unicorn while extending the magic of the original into a bigger world. Highly recommended for lovers of Beagle's classic, who are legion. -- Marlene Harris
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Harris, Marlene. "The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn." Library Journal, vol. 148, no. 3, Mar. 2023, p. 125. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A739686009/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=21176f3d. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
Beagle, Peter S. THE ESSENTIAL PETER S. BEAGLE, VOLUME II Tachyon (Fiction None) $28.95 5, 16 ISBN: 9781616963903
The second part of a two-volume retrospective from the acclaimed fantasist.
This installment, introduced by SF and horror writer Meg Elison, draws more directly from Beagle's past, featuring multiple stories purportedly chronicling otherworldly encounters experienced by Beagle and his friends in their youth. Two other tales attribute unearthly abilities to Beagle's dear friend Avram Davidson, the late (and somewhat quirky) writer. Some of the stories draw from others' literary works, including a Tarzan/John Carter crossover that also serves as a not-so-subtle criticism of creator Edgar Rice Burroughs' bigotry and a gripping Patricia Highsmith-inspired story of a meek housewife summoning previously unknown inner strength when confronted by a new member of her bridge club who views her as prey. Two stories have something of a Twilight Zone resonance about them (which isn't intended as a criticism of these two powerful tales): "Sleight of Hand," involving a woman mourning the recent death of her husband and child who's granted an impossible second chance, and "Vanishing," about an unhappy man forced to confront his dark memories serving as a young American soldier monitoring the Berlin Wall. Of course, there are two tales of dragons invading California (one a work of metafiction and the other a buddy-cop story) and a chronicle of werewolf revenge that draws from an entirely different cultural tradition than the first volume's "Lila the Werewolf." There are perhaps many readers who know Beagle only from his classic novel, The Last Unicorn (1968), unaware of his considerable body of long and short fiction; others are longtime fans already familiar with such gems as A Fine and Private Place (1960), The Folk of the Air (1986), and The Innkeeper's Song (1993), among others. This two-volume collection is a must-have for all of them.
Yes, essential, for whomever you are.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Beagle, Peter S.: THE ESSENTIAL PETER S. BEAGLE, VOLUME II." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2023. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A743460672/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=effb40c5. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
Beagle, Peter S. THE ESSENTIAL PETER S. BEAGLE, VOLUME I Tachyon (Fiction None) $28.95 5, 16 ISBN: 9781616963880
The first part of a two-volume retrospective from the author of The Last Unicorn (1968).
Volume 1, introduced by Jane Yolen, contains some of Beagle's most classic stories, including "Come Lady Death," in which a jaded British woman meets her match when she invites Death to her ball, and "Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros," about a socially awkward academic's relationship with a somewhat unusually presented and philosophically minded unicorn. "Lila the Werewolf" features the first appearance of Joe Farrell, the protagonist of Beagle's novel The Folk of the Air (1986); fans of that book will be delighted to encounter Farrell in an additional story that takes place after the novel and features some interesting character growth on his part. The collection also contains the absolutely chilling "We Never Talk About My Brother," the story of a news anchor with a secret and impossibly powerful control over the stories he reports, and the sweetly melancholy "Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel," concerning a painter's divinely compelling model. There are also whimsical works like "Gordon, the Self-Made Cat," starring a mouse who refuses to accept that biology is destiny. Whether set in a fantastical landscape, the New York City of Beagle's youth, or the invented northern California town of Avicenna, these are fables that explore how a brush with the uncanny can either change a life or simply spotlight what is already present. Magic is the lens through which the author shows us how fraught a mother-daughter relationship can be, how difficult it can be to let go of a dead friend or lover, and how a greater threat can unite two squabbling siblings. Delicate line drawings by artist Stephanie Law add a charming coda to each tale.
Brimming with magic, lyrical prose, and deeply felt emotion, this is, indeed, essential reading.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Beagle, Peter S.: THE ESSENTIAL PETER S. BEAGLE, VOLUME I." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2023. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A743460671/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3d3ea204. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons
Peter S. Beagle. Simon & Schuster, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-1-66802-527-7
Bestseller Beagle (The Last Unicorn) delivers a rip-roaring standalone fantasy that was first announced in 2007. The kingdom of Bellemontagne's resident dragon exterminator, Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax, who just goes by Robert and harbors a secret disdain for his profession, is summoned to the castle by King Antoine to clear the place of dragons in preparation for Prince Reginald Krije of Corvinia's presentation at court. The prince wishes to ask Bellemontagne's Princess Cerise for her hand in marriage, but first he must convince his father, King Krije, of his merits as successor: "For all that I am his only son, he will not rest satisfied that our humble realm can safely be left in my hands until I have accomplished something of valor and value." To prove his worth, he hopes to slay a truly impressive dragon and enlists Robert's assistance. Together, Robert, Cerise, and Reginald set out on an expedition to find a worthy beast, facing unexpected dangers and interpersonal conflict along the way. The trio has conflicting ambitions: Cerise wants to marry the prince; Reginald wants his fathet's approval; and Robert simply wants to change careers. The resulting adventureoffers surprises and humor aplenty alongside a hefty dose of classic dragon lore. Beagle's fans will reel this was worth the wait. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Agency. (May)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 10, 11 Mar. 2024, pp. 42+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A787043895/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9baab6eb. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
Beagle, Peter S. I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons. Saga/S. & S. May 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781668025277. $26.99. FANTASY
Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax (or just Robert for brevity's sake) inherited his father's job as a dragon exterminator for the small kingdom of Bellemontagne. It's a role that Robert performs exceedingly well, but there's just one problem: he likes dragons. He even keeps several as secret pets, an act of protest that only makes his career more unpleasant. However, change is in the air when the king calls upon Robert to rid the castle of the draconic vermin. There, Robert crosses paths with a princess and prince who, like him, feel trapped by the lives into which they were born. The three join forces in a bid to circumvent fate by confronting and defeating a long-forgotten evil force once thought dead. Beagle's cozy novel embraces over-the-top fantasy tropes, and the effect is a tale that's as hilarious as it is endearing. Evocative of Terry Pratchett, the writing grows beyond its charming aesthetic to deliver a deceptively serious narrative. VERDICT A high fantasy that's also cozy, the latest from Beagle (The Way Home; The Last Unicorn) is recommended for fans of Neil Gaiman's Stardust and Travis Baldree's Bookshops & Bonedust.--Andy Myers
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Myers, Andy. "I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons." Library Journal, vol. 149, no. 4, Apr. 2024, p. 79. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A788954012/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a9009195. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
The Unicorn Anthology. Tachyon. Apr. 2019. 288p. ed. by Peter S. Beagle & Jacob Weisman. ISBN 9781616963156. pap. $15.95; ebk. ISBN 9781616962838. FANTASY
Beagle (The Last Unicorn), who both celebrates and laments his own association with unicorns in the introduction, and Weisman (The New Voices of Fantasy) have done a fine job of collecting a remarkable range of previously published unicorn stories by 16 of the most popular fantasists writing today. While there's a bit of humor scattered throughout, the true threads of collection are an aching melancholy and, of course, the virginity of those who try to tame or capture unicorns. Some of the stories veer into outright horror. A few of the standouts barely diverge from the traditional forest paths of unicorn lore--such as Jane Yolen's lush and beautiful "The Transfigured Hart," which follows two children and their wide-eyed wonder; others, like Caitlin R. Kiernan's sexy, hard-boiled "The Maltese Unicorn," travel unfamiliar urban streets. All, including David Smed's Vietnam vet protagonist in "Survivor," and those in Garth Nix's "Highest Justice," learn that unicorn magic is nothing with which to be trifled.
VERDICT Both fantasy and short story readers should enjoy this well-rounded collection.--Charli Osborne, Southfield P.L., MI
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Osborne, Charli. "The Unicorn Anthology. Tachyon." Xpress Reviews, 5 Apr. 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A581730748/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=32869a38. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.
Peter S. Beagle (editor) and Jacob Weisman (editor); THE UNICORN ANTHOLOGY; Tachyon Publications (Fiction: Fantasy) 15.95 ISBN: 9781616963156
Byline: Meagan Logsdon
Unicorns in literature are fascinating, evocative, mysterious, and elusive, and with The Unicorn Anthology, editors Peter S. Beagle -- himself of unicorn fame -- and Jacob Weisman invite continued appreciation of the legendary beast, drawing it beyond its familiar medieval framework.
The usual high fantasy elements -- wizards, pure maidens, and magical forests -- abound, but they are augmented by unexpected and refreshing settings and situations. A Vietnam veteran has to live with the bizarre consequences of getting a unicorn tattoo in Dave Smeds's "Survivor," a poignant meditation on living for others. A con artist wrestles with the effects of his lifestyle and discovers beauty in the seemingly ordinary in Jack C. Haldeman II's "Ghost Town." David D. Levine and Sara A. Mueller turn unicorns into show horses, with heightened pageantry and human drama, in "Falling Off the Unicorn." In 1930s New York, an occult bookstore owner confronts otherworldly mysteries in CaitlA-n R. Kiernan's "The Maltese Unicorn."
A particular standout is Beagle's own contribution, "My Son Heydari and the Karkadann," which removes the figure of the unicorn from its typical Western context. Bruce Coville's "Homeward Bound" enters beautiful metaphysical territory in its final scene. And Jane Yolen's "The Transfigured Hart," a hermetically inspired call to see with more than the eye, is a lovely end to the short stories. Nancy Springer's series of unicorn poetry completes the collection as an effective set of word paintings that tie together, with shimmering thread, all that comes before.
The varied and creative stories of The Unicorn Anthology inspire new ways of engagement with an old legend. Across cultures and times, the mystical essence of this beast continues to haunt the forest of the collective human psyche.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Foreword Magazine, Inc.
http://www.forewordmagazine.com
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Logsdon, Meagan. "The Unicorn Anthology." ForeWord, 27 Feb. 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A576888256/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e9eec63d. Accessed 2 Aug. 2025.