Peter S. Beagle

"Peter S. Beagle is (in no particular order) a wonderful writer, a fine human being, and a bandit prince out to steal readers' hearts." ~ Tad Williams¹

Born in Manhattan in April 1939 and raised in the Bronx, NY, Peter S. Beagle was a voracious reader and knew from an early age that he wanted to be a writer. He submitted a poem and a story for consideration to the 1955 Scholastic Writing Awards Contest when he was a senior in high school, and the poem won. Unbeknownst to Beagle, the award included a scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh. Four years later, he graduated, having majored in creative writing.

By the time he was 20, Beagle had acquired an agent, written A Fine and Private Place, and spent a year abroad. Shortly afterward, he found himself signed up for a Wallace Stegner writing fellowship at Stanford University in California and in a writing class with the likes of Larry McMurtry and Ken Kesey:

...it was a year in which I learned that these guys were wonderful writers and I can't write like that. I do something else... I had started The Last Unicorn and later came back to it. I was married to my first wife and had an instant family and suddenly had to figure out how to feed people. I began to do magazine work for the The Saturday Evening Post and I learned a trade, how to be a free-lancer. It was a real skill to have and mainly it put food on the table.²

In addition to being a fantasy author whose works have been translated into at least 15 languages, Beagle is also a screenwriter, novelist, and folk singer / songwriter (he sings in German, Yiddish, French, and English.) He has written some beautiful stuff. Whimsical, clever, and humorous come to mind; unfortunately, out of print is also an accurate description. If your local library doesn't turn up copies, try Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com; secondhand copies are available for most of these.

Readily available:

• Tamsin 1999 A ghost story
• The Last Unicorn 1968 This has its own node...
• The Innkeeper's Song 1993 Started out as a song.
• A Fine and Private Place 1960 His first novel, written when he was 19. A hell of a first book.
• I See By My Outfit 1965 Nonfiction; Beagle travels the country on a motorscooter, Travels with Charley style, and reports on what he sees (and how he's seen...)
• A Dance for Emilia 2000
• The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietsche 1997 A collection of some of Beagle's early journalism pieces
• The Unicorn Sonata 1996

Out of print:

• Peter S. Beagle's Immortal Unicorn 1995
• Giant Bones 1997 A collection of novellas set in the world of The Innkeeper's Song
• The Lady and Her Tiger With Pat Derby; a biography of her life as an animal trainer
• The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle Contains "Lila the Werewolf and Other Stories"--well worth it if you can find it: 'My girlfriend Lila is a werewolf. But hey, I've dated girls with worse problems...'
• The Folk of the Air 1986 A Society for Creative Anachronism--esque group figures prominently in this novel.
• Portrait of Jennie
• In the Presense of Elephants In collaboration with Pat Derby; a coffee-table book (photographs of elephants) for which Beagle wrote the introduction
• Garden of Earthly Delights

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Sources:

¹ www.whitemountain.org/kim/psbeagle/ ² www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~gizmo/1997/beagle2.html Also: www.sfsite.com/isfdb-bin/exact_author.cgi?Peter_S.Beagle www.amazon.com www.bn.com

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I've recently updated this write-up. It needed it. Some things I've learned in my less-than-a-month on E2: Name your sources * Write all you know about the subject * Node your library * Cast shadows * Hardlink titles of books and movies, even if the links don't currently lead anywhere; they might someday * Learn from the Masters * Vary the text styles * Take time to do the research * Ask for help * Make friends *