The Last Unicorn

Peter S. Beagle is an acclaimed American author who works in several genres, including screenplays, nonfiction, and, most notably, fantasy novels. Born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, Beagle wrote his first novel, a fantasy novel entitled A Fine and Private Place, at 19 years old. He earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and later held the prestigious Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Often hailed as one of the greatest fantasy novels, The Last Unicorn is Beagle’s second novel and his most well-known work. In 2011, Beagle won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and in 2018, he received the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.

By the end of 1968, the same year as The Last Unicorn’s publication, over 3 million copies of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings had been sold in the United States. Interestingly, American readers’ interest in sword and sorcery—also known as heroic fantasy—mounted in the early 1960s, and by 1968, American demand for fantasy novels like The Lord of the Rings was at an all-time high. Tolkien’s belated and unexpected success in the American market is often highlighted as a turning point for the fantasy genre, and his work is largely credited for other fantasy novels being able to enter the American mainstream. Additionally, Beagle’s attention to the negative impact that humans have on animal life in The Last Unicorn can be linked to the growing environmental concerns and movements of the late 1960s. Although the novel’s publication predates the Santa Barbara oil spill and Cuyahoga River fires of 1969, which fueled Americans’ desire to better protect the environment, Beagle’s portrayal of King Haggard as a selfish man who nearly drives unicorns to extinction nonetheless seems to reflect a similar environmental consciousness.

Beagle cites Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 children’s novel The Wind in the Willows, which revolves around the lives of animals, as a major source of his interest in the fantasy genre. To expand on the world of The Last Unicorn, Beagle penned several short stories and novellas, including the 2017 short story collection The Overneath, which features two new stories on Schmendrick’s life and one about the Chinese qilin, a creature that bears resemblance to the unicorn. In 2006, Beagle also published his original manuscript as a novella entitled The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version. In comparison to the finalized novel, this novella is significantly shorter and takes place in the modern day. Also published in 1968, Ursula Le Guin’s fantasy novel A Wizard of Earthsea is another coming-of-age story, featuring a young mage named Ged who embarks on a journey to free himself of a magical shadow creature.