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: Oct 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781447499961

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850, the only son of an engineer, Thomas Stevenson. Despite a lifetime of poor health, Stevenson was a keen traveller, and his first book An Inland Voyage (1878) recounted a canoe tour of France and Belgium. In 1880, he married an American divorcee, Fanny Osbourne, and there followed Stevenson's most productive period, in which he wrote, amongst other books, Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Kidnapped (both 1886). In 1888, Stevenson left Britain in search of a more salubrious climate, settling in Samoa, where he died in 1894.

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Body-Snatcher

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1850. Aged seventeen, he enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, but he was a disinterested student whose bohemian lifestyle detracted from his studies, and four years later, in April of 1971, he declared his decision to pursue a life of letters. A keen traveller, Stevenson became involved with a number of European literary circles, and had his first paid piece, an essay entitled ‘Roads’, published in 1873.

Stevenson suffered from various ailments and a weak chest for the whole of his life, and spent much of his adult years searching for a place of residence suitable to his state of ill health. In 1880, he married Fanny Van de Grift, and they moved between France, Britain and California together. It was during these years that Stevenson produced much of his best-known work–Treasure Island, in 1883, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in 1886, and Black Arrow, in 1888. Following the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson devoted his later years to travels in the Pacific. During the late 1880s, he spent extended periods of time in both the Hawaiian and Samoan Islands, befriending many native and colonial leaders of the day and writing a number of accounts of his travels. In 1890 he purchased a 400-acre tract of land in Samoa, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

By 1894, still suffering from various ailments, he fell into a state of depression, and in December of that year, while straining to open a bottle of wine, he collapsed, most likely from a cerebral haemorrhage. A few hours later he was dead, aged just 44. Stevenson remains highly popular to this day, and is ranked the 26th most translated author in the world.

The Body-Snatcher

EVERY night in the year, four of us sat in the small parlour of the George at Debenham–the undertaker, and the landlord, and Fettes, and myself. Sometimes there would be more; but blow high, blow low, come rain or snow or frost, we four would be each planted in his own particular armchair. Fettes was an old drunken Scotchman, a man of education obviously, and a man of some property, since he lived in idleness. He had come to Debenham years ago, while still

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

[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.

[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.