Peter Costello is a Dublin-born author, and biographer, an eminent cultural historian and scholar of James Joyce. He attended the University of Michigan. He has written biographies of James Joyce, Flann O'Brien and Jules Verne. He has also written books about Clongowes Wood College, Clerys, and other topics. His first book In Search of Lake Monsters (1974) deals primarily with the Loch Ness Monster, but also similar reports of creatures in lakes and Sea Serpents.