Peter S. Beagle

Peter S. Beagle at the 2012 Phoenix Comicon. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

Peter S. Beagle is an American fantasy writer chiefly known for his book The Last Unicorn and screenplay of Ralph Bakshi's ill-fated The Lord of the Rings.

Other works include A Fine and Private Place, a fantasy romance set in a graveyard, and the short story "Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros". Also, the non-fantasy but excellent I See By My Outfit, a pseudo-autobiographical road novel.

Works by Peter S. Beagle with their own trope pages include:

• The Last Unicorn (the novel)
• The Last Unicorn (the film, for which he wrote the screenplay)
• The Lord of the Rings

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Peter S. Beagle provides examples of the following tropes:

• Amnesiac Lover: Lukassa in The Innkeeper's Song, caused by her own death.
• Cats Are Magic
• The Fair Folk
• Fate Worse Than Death
• Follow the White Rabbit: In Tamsin, Mister Cat leads Jenny to the secret room where they find the ghosts of Tamsin and Miss Sophia Brown.
• Formally-Named Pet: Tamsin features a cat simply named Mister Cat, and another named Miss Sophia Brown.
• Ghost Amnesia:
  • In A Fine And Private Place, one ghost forgets how he died. Ghosts in general gradually forget their lives, and become less detailed and less definite in appearance as they forget what they looked like.
  • In Tamsin, the eponymous ghost appears to others as she remembers herself. Sometimes she remembers herself very well, right down to her crooked teeth; other times she has gaping holes in her body because she can barely remember anything. The driving force of the plot is finding out what the so-called Other One had to do with her death -- which Tamsin herself has forgotten because she was so terrified of him.
  • Lukassa in The Innkeeper's Song is brought back from the dead, but can't remember anything, not even her lover, Tikat.
• Hanging Judge: Judge Jeffreys in Tamsin.
• Historical Domain Character: Judge Jeffreys in Tamsin.
• Literary Allusion Title: "The grave's a fine and private place / But none, I think, do there embrace."
• Menstrual Menace: "Lila the Werewolf" purposely plays with the similarities between menstruation and lycanthropy.
• Odd Friendship: In "Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros", a professor is friends with what he insists is a talking Indian Rhinoceros. It says it's a unicorn. Despite this difference of opinion and other differences, it's a quite close friendship.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: In A Fine and Private Place and Tamsin
• Our Mermaids Are Different: In "Salt Wine", a merman rewards a sailor who rescued him by giving him the recipe for salt wine. It makes him rich, but then it turns out that a small number of those who drink it become transformed into mer-creatures themselves. Here, mermaids are portrayed as wild and inhuman, and they range from supernaturally hideous to supernaturally beautiful.
• Ravens and Crows: In A Fine And Private Place, a raven helps and cares for the protagonist, Jonathan Rebeck, who lives in a graveyard, giving him food and, later, news. Subverts the traditional creepiness of corvids; despite being a Talking Animal, the raven is one of the most down-to-earth and least eldritch things in the book.
• Spell My Name with a "The": In Tamsin there is The Billy Blind. Not a Billy Blind, but The Billy Blind.
• Talking Animal:
  • According to the professor at least; the rhinoceros maintains it's a unicorn.
  • A Fine and Private Place features a talking raven.
• The Wild Hunt: Appears in Tamsin.