The Last Unicorn is a fantasy novel by American author Peter S. Beagle and published in 1968, by Viking Press in the U.S. and The Bodley Head in the U.K. It follows the tale of a unicorn, who believes she is the last of her kind in the world and undertakes a quest to discover what has happened to the other unicorns. It has sold more than six million copies worldwide since its original publication, and has been translated into at least 25 languages (prior to the 2007 edition).
In 1987, Locus ranked The Last Unicorn number five among the 33 "All-Time Best Fantasy Novels", based on a poll of subscribers; • See also "1987 Locus Poll Award". ISFDB. Retrieved 2012-04-25. it ranked number eighteen in the 1998 rendition of the poll.The Locus Online website links multiple pages providing the results of several polls and a little other information. It was recognized in 2024 as belonging to a "New Canon" of fantasy literature by Palgrave Macmillan, which published Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn: A Critical Companion.
Plot Two hunters pass through a forest, but find no game. Frustrated, they believe the animals might be protected by a Unicorn's magic, and they call out the taunt that she is the last of her kind. The Unicorn hears, and is troubled. She travels through the land and discovers that humans no longer recognize her, seeing only a pretty white mare. A talking butterfly warns her that her kind have been caught and herded to a far away land by the Red Bull, and she goes in search of them. During her journey, she is taken captive by a traveling carnival led by the witch Mommy Fortuna, who uses illusion to make regular animals appear as mythical creatures. The Unicorn finds herself the only true legendary creature among the group, save for the harpy, Celaeno. Schmendrick, a hapless magician traveling with the carnival, sees the Unicorn for what she is, and frees her. The Unicorn frees the other creatures including Celaeno, who kills Mommy Fortuna.
The Unicorn and Schmendrick travel toward the castle of King Haggard, who keeps the Red Bull. When Schmendrick is captured by bandits, the Unicorn rescues him and attracts the attention of Molly Grue, the bandit leader's mistress. The three reach the town of Hagsgate, which was King Haggard's first conquest. A villager named Drinn tells them of a curse that the town will share in Haggard's fortune until someone from Hagsgate brings Haggard's castle down. Drinn says he found a baby boy in the town marketplace one night. He knew the child was the one in the prophecy, but left the baby alone, not wanting to lose the town's fortune. King Haggard found the baby that night and adopted it.
Molly, Schmendrick and the Unicorn continue to Haggard's castle, but are attacked by the Red Bull. Attempting to aid her, Schmendrick unwittingly turns the Unicorn into a human woman. Confused by the change, the Red Bull gives up the pursuit. The Unicorn is shocked by the feeling of human mortality. Schmendrick tells her that the spell is only an illusion, since he is immortal and only mortals can make real magic. The three continue to Haggard's castle, where Schmendrick introduces the Unicorn as "Lady Amalthea". Haggard welcomes them, hoping to gather clues to find more unicorns. Amalthea is courted by Haggard's adopted son, Prince Lír. Haggard reveals that he has trapped the unicorns in the sea for his pleasure, and that nothing else can bring him joy. He accuses Amalthea of coming to save the unicorns and says that he knows who she really is. But Amalthea has seemingly forgotten her true nature and her desire to save the unicorns.
Following clues given by a cat, Molly, Schmendrick, and Amalthea find the Red Bull's lair, joined by Lír. When the Red Bull attacks them, Schmendrick changes Amalthea back to her original form and he becomes mortal. Lír confronts the bull but is trampled. In a rage of grief, the Unicorn drives the bull into the sea. The unicorns are freed, and they run back to their homes, as Haggard's castle falls behind them.
The Unicorn revives Lír with the healing touch of her horn. He is now king after Haggard's death, and he tries to follow the Unicorn. As they pass through the now-ruined town of Hagsgate, they learn that Drinn is Lír's father, who abandoned him to fulfill the prophecy. Realizing that he has new responsibilities as king after seeing Hagsgate, Lír returns to rebuild it after accompanying Schmendrick and Molly to the edge of his kingdom. The Unicorn returns to her forest after telling Schmendrick that she is different from all the other unicorns now, because she knows love and regret. Schmendrick and Molly come across a princess in trouble and he tells her Lír is the hero to save her. Schmendrick and Molly sing a love song together.
Characters The Unicorn is the protagonist of the story. She leaves the safety of her forest upon learning that she is the last unicorn in the world, with information about the Red Bull as her only clue. When she first encounters the Red Bull, Schmendrick manages to inadvertently change the Unicorn into a human female to confuse the Red Bull and force its withdrawal. Schmendrick calls her "Lady Amalthea" so as not to arouse King Haggard's suspicions. Her alias evokes the Greek goddess Amalthea. The butterfly is an eccentric character who happens upon the Unicorn at the beginning of the story. While speaking in riddles and songs, he manages to give the Unicorn some vital information about the fate of the other unicorns. The butterfly's dialogue is drawn from things that amused the author and his childhood friend during a trip to the Berkshire Hills, where Beagle began writing the novel. Mommy Fortuna is a wicked old witch, who uses her dark magic to run a sideshow carnival for profit. The carnival features what appear to be mythical creatures, but are actually normal animals that have been enchanted, with the exception of the harpy Celaeno. The name "Fortuna" alludes to the Roman goddess of fortune, and German mythical hero Fortunatus. Schmendrick is a bumbling magician who travels with Mommy Fortuna's traveling carnival purely to gain a living. Reduced to entertaining the sightseers who come to the carnival, Schmendrick wants nothing more than to become a true, powerful magician who does not rely on card tricks and cheap illusions. When he sees the captured Unicorn for what she is, he decides to free her and join her quest. Schmendrick was a character Beagle had initially made up for his children's bedtime stories, and was called "the world's worst magician". The name "Schmendrick the Magician" is a parody of the character "Mandrake the Magician". His name is also drawn from a Yiddish word schmendrick that Beagle defines as "somebody out of his depth, the boy sent to do a man's job, someone who has expanded to the limits of his incapacity." Captain Cully is the leader of a second-rate band of outlaws fighting King Haggard. Although he attempts to be dashing and hospitable, Cully falls victim to his own jealousy of famous mythical outlaws such as Robin Hood, an illusion of whom Schmendrick inadvertently conjures. According to Beagle, Captain Cully's name is drawn from an old English slang word for "buddy". Molly Grue is Captain Cully's common-law wife. As a young woman she had eloped with him, naively attracted to the romance of loving a woodland fugitive and sharing his life. Unfortunately, this turned into years of serving Cully's ragged vagrants as their camp cook. When she discovers Schmendrick leaving with the unicorn, she decides to follow them to help the unicorn in her quest. Molly Grue's name is drawn from a French word meaning "crane". While never initially making the connection, Beagle notes that it is possible that the name was also inspired by his "favorite writing teacher in high school". The Red Bull is blind but powerful, and associated with King Haggard as captor of unicorns. Its main weapon is fear. When the unicorn finally stands up to the Red Bull, the affiliation with King Haggard is ended. King Haggard is a miserable and cruel ruler who cares for no one, not even his adopted son Prince Lír. His loneliness and misery is alleviated only by the sight of unicorns, which drove him to capture them all for his own pleasure, in tandem with the Red Bull. While the king's name is quite literal, Beagle elaborated "on the one hand, it is a particular look, but on the other it's also a falconer's term. It's what you call an undomesticated hawk, a bird that knows the rudiments but is not reliable. If you fly a haggard, you might never see it again, it might go back to the wild." Adding how he has "never really been able to see [Haggard] as a villain", Beagle explains seeing much of his own character in Haggard to the point that he "felt sorry for him". Prince Lír is a skilled hero who was adopted by King Haggard, who found him in the town of Hagsgate. Prince Lír is the opposite of his adopted father, with a life of valor, honor, and compassion for others. He falls in love with Lady Amalthea, not realizing her true identity. For all of her arrogance towards humankind, the Unicorn falls in love with Lír. Beagle "knew that the prince's name had to be one syllable" and chose "Lír" because he liked the sound of it, but later noted he borrowed the name of a Celtic sea god, Llyr, added to the fact that becoming "King Lír" after succeeding his adoptive father "echoed Shakespeare".
Conception and creation It took Beagle "close to two years" to write The Last Unicorn; he states that "it was hard every step of the way". Beagle came up with the idea in 1962 while on an "artistic retreat" in Berkshire Hills after Viking Press rejected his novel The Mirror Kingdom. He stated that though the idea was "just suddenly there", he had "read tons of fantasy and mythology" from childhood, and that his mother told him that he had shared a story about unicorns during a visit to one of the elementary school classes she taught. As a child, he had loved the 1941 book The Colt from Moon Mountain by Dorothy P. Lathrop (a story about a unicorn in Kansas). The Spanish artist Marcial Rodriguez had given him a painting of unicorns fighting bulls when he was seventeen. Once he had the idea, he did research on unicorns at the Pittsfield Library.Deluxe Edition, pp. 247–280.
The 85-page manuscript that Beagle first wrote differs greatly from the final version. Though the unicorn "is much the same", the story is set in modern times, and the unicorn is accompanied by a two-headed demon named Webster and Azazel. This original version was published as a limited edition hardcover by Subterranean Press titled The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version in 2006, later republished as The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey by Tachyon Publications. Beagle stopped working on this initial manuscript in 1963, stating that "[i]t was a dead end", but picked the project up again in 1965.
Beagle dedicated the novel to Olfert Dapper, a reference to whom Beagle had come across during his research, as well as Robert Nathan, whose novel One More Spring influenced Beagle's A Fine and Private Place. In 2012, Beagle published a novelet, Olfert Dapper's Day, a fictional tale of Dapper's travels.
Publication history
In English There have been many print editions of The Last Unicorn.
A corrected, definitive English-language text was prepared for the 2007 Deluxe Edition and also used in the trade paperback 40th Anniversary Edition (Roc Books, 2008). The Deluxe Edition was available for purchase only from Barnes & Noble, with co-publishers Roc imprint and Barnes & Noble (OCLC 243775547).. Retrieved 2012-04-26. Beside the corrected text of the novel it included an edition of the sequel and new material including cover illustration by the prominent fantasy and children's book illustrators Leo and Diane Dillon.
In July 2022, the book was reissued.