The Body-Snatcher
Robert Louis Stevenson's short story The Body-Snatcher (1884) is the tale of MacFarlane and Fettes, a pair of "resurrection men," or body-snatchers - unsavory types who secretly disinter fresh corpses from graveyards to sell as anatomy subjects. This grim little tale is based on reality, as in Edinburgh - Stevenson's home town - body-snatching was so common they built high walls and guard towers around the graveyards. Sometimes, for want of a corpse, an even less scrupulous body-snatcher might just off someone in the night instead of risking a trip to a rural graveyard…but I don't want to give away too much.
Stevenson, who was a super-famous and prolific author in his time, is making something of a comeback. For a time there he was poo poo'd as a second-class writer of children's and horror stories, not on par with "serious literature." He was left out of anthologies and not taught in schools. No matter what the scholarly reception, Stevenson remains very popular around the world. According to one index, Stevenson ranks the 28th most translated author in the world, beating out even Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe. So it goes that an author's popularity swings back and forth, generation after generation, like a pendulum, as a new crop of readers discover their work.
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