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.[1] It has sold more than six million copies[3] worldwide since its original publication, and has been translated into at least twenty-five 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;[4] it ranked number eighteen in the 1998 rendition of the poll.[5] It was recognized in 2024 as belonging to a "New Canon" of fantasy literature by Palgrave Macmillan, which published an academic study dedicated exclusively to it titled Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn: A Critical Companion.
