The Body-Snatcher (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

By Robert Louis Stevenson

Author of the timeless Treasure Island (1883), Robert Louis Stevenson is a hugely popular author, and one of the most translated in the world. First published in Pall Mall magazine in December of 1884, 'The Body-Snatcher' is based on characters in the employ of Robert Knox, around the time of the famous Burke and Hare murders. Many of the Gothic romance and horror stories, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781447499961

Reviews for The Body-Snatcher (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

[lgandt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Again had the wonderful atmosphere so many newer authors lack. Was creepy and fun at the same time. If you can handle the idea of grave robbing and body snatching then this is an excellent way to spend a short amount of time

[david.alfred.sarkies · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As I was reading this book the thought that was going through my mind was how doctors in the 19th Century would, during the middle of the night, raid graveyards for freshly buried corpses, exhume them, and take them back to their laboratories to dissect them. This story however goes a little further because it is suggested that the main character goes beyond exhuming freshly buried corpses to creating his own corpses.However, as I thought about the idea in this book, I came to realise how similar this story is to The Wolf of Wall Street. The reason I say this is because both of the main characters seem to go into a very grey world (actually, that is putting it very lightly because the actions of both of these characters are highly illegal) to become successful in their various trades. With the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort practices stock manipulation, high pressure selling, and multiple other acts of stock fraud to become a multi-millionaire. In this story MacFarlane resorts to murder to obtain the bodies that he requires to be able to study medicine.I would not be surprised if this happened quite regularly in Victorian England because back in those days one generally did not leave their body to science for study and the ability to obtain corpses to perform autopsies was very difficult. In fact I believe that when somebody died you generally didn't perform autopsies you simply buried the body and were done with it.I was included to connect this story with the legend of Jack the Ripper, until I discovered that Jack the Ripper was haunting the streets of London four years after this book was published. However, consider this, Jack, whoever he was, would select prostitutes as his targets (namely people that would not go missing, and not important enough to appear on the police's radar) and, as the story goes, would bit by bit remove parts of their body and place them around the corpse. This does not sound like the act of some psychotic serial killer, but rather the actions of a doctor, or a scientist, who was going out of his way to study the human body. Actually, I believe that one of the suspects in the case was a doctor.The story seems to be told from the perspective of a man named Fettes who gets caught up in this rather gruesome series of events, though as I suggested, it was not simply exhuming corpses from the graves, but rather creating corpses so that at a later time one can then exhume them. Obviously if one is doing this one needs to get to the corpse pretty quickly after it has been buried because if one waits too long then the corpse begins to decay and become useless. Obviously this is something that belongs in the past because these days you can hand your corpse over to science so that they can study it.

[altheaann · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

(1884) Great set-up, excellent writing... but the 'scary' ending didn't work for me at all. I felt like it was on the level of spooky stories kids tell each other during sleepover parties (do kids still do that?)
It's about some young medical students whose duty to procure dead bodies for their eminent professor leads them down a spiral of moral depravity and blackmail. A nice exploration of guilt and complicity.