An early gothic short-story by one of the great writers of the nineteenth century. This first appeared in Pall Mall Gazette's 1884 Christmas issue, but was written in 1881 to be part of a collection of supernatural 'creepers' which never saw the light of day, five years before Stevenson would write Jekyll and Hyde.

The story's characters are based on Burke and Hare, the duo who turned from grave-robbing to murder in order to sell cadavers to the surgeon Robert Knox (1791–1862) in 1828.

First edition in book form; 12mo (13.5 x 10 cm); 4 engraved plates, later ownership stamps to front pastedown and title, otherwise clean internally; publisher's decorative cloth, preserved in a later morocco backed protective box, a little darkening and some very minor discreet repairs, a very good copy; 61, [3]pp.

Beinecke 608.