Study Tools
“The Body Snatcher” is a Gothic short story by Robert Louis Stevenson that was originally published in 1884 in the Pall Mall Gazette
. This story is told by an unnamed first-person narrator who recounts the tale of two medical students who obtain bodies for dissection for an anatomy professor. The story is based on historical events involving real-life murders committed in 1828 to supply a surgeon named Robert Knox with bodies for his anatomy classes in Edinburgh, Scotland.Read the free full text, the full story summary, an in-depth character analysis of Fettes, and descriptions of the main ideas in "The Body Snatcher."