SOURCE: "Werewolves and Unicorns: Fabulous Beasts in Peter Beagle's Fiction," in Forms of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Third International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film, edited by Jan Hokenson and Howard Pearce, Greenwood Press, 1986, pp. 181-89.

In the following essay, Tobin examines Beagle's use of myths about unicorns and werewolves in such works as The Last Unicorn and Lila the Werewolf.

"Would you call this age a good one for unicorns?" asks the elder of two hunters riding through the first pages of Peter Beagle's Last Unicorn; "Times change," the other mutters. By the end of a brief conversation, the elder has made a judgment. Breaking out of the lilac wood, he shouts back over his shoulder as if he knows the listening unicorn can over-hear: "Stay where you are, poor beast. This is no world for you." Elders in fairy tales are wise...