The String of Pearls
- Downloads
- Under 100
- First published
- 1847
- Pages
- 1,336
About this book
This is the penny dreadful that gave the world Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street. Serialized for working-class readers between 1846 and 1847, it follows a London barber who dispatches unsuspecting customers through a tilting trapdoor chair, robs their bodies, and hands the remains to his neighbor Mrs. Lovett, whose pie shop does a roaring trade. A missing sailor, a loyal sweetheart, and a dogged investigation slowly close in on the grisly secret beneath the shop. Cheap, lurid, and hugely popular, the serial helped define Victorian horror and has fed stage plays, films, and a famous musical ever since.
From the opening pages
Before Fleet-street had reached its present importance, and when George the Third was young, and the two figures who used to strike the chimes at old St. Dunstan's church were in all their glory—being a great impediment to errand-boys on their progress, and a matter of gaping curiosity to country people—there stood close to the sacred edifice a small barber's shop, which was kept by a man of the name of Sweeney Todd.
How it was that he came by the name of Sweeney, as a Christian appellation, we are at a loss to conceive, but such was his name, as might be seen in extremely corpulent yellow letters over his shop window, by any who chose there to look for it.
Barbers by that time in Fleet-street had not become fashionable, and no more dreamt of calling themselves artists than of taking the tower by storm; moreover they were not, as they are now, constantly slaughtering fine fat bears, and yet, somehow people had hair on their heads just the same as they have at present, without the aid of that unctuous auxiliary. Moreover, Sweeney Todd, in common with those really primitive sort of times, did not think it at all necessary to have any waxen effigies of humanity in his window. There was no languishing young lady looking over the left shoulder in order that a profusion of auburn tresses might repose upon her lily neck, and great conquerors and great statesmen were not then, as they are now, held up to public ridicule with dabs of rouge upon their cheeks, a quantity of gunpowder scattered in for beard, and some bristles sticking on end for eyebrows.
No. Sweeney Todd was a barber of the old school, and he never thought of glorifying himself on account of any extraneous circumstance. If he had lived in Henry the Eighth's palace, it would be all the same as Henry the Eighth's dog-kennel, and he would scarcely have believed human nature to be so green as to pay an extra sixpence to be shaven and shorn in any particular locality.
Contents
About the author
More from this genre
See all- O OrmondOrmond
- H The House of the Secret (La Maison Des Hommes Vivants)The House of the Secret (La Maison Des Hommes Vivants)
- Q The Queen of the IsleThe Queen of the Isle
- T Tales of the SupernaturalTales of the Supernatural
- D The Devil's Elixir, Vol. 1The Devil's Elixir, Vol. 1
- P The Poor ClareThe Poor Clare
Books like this one
Discussion
No comments yet. Share a thought, a question or a favourite passage.
Copyright concern? Read our DMCA policy
Read or download
Public domain book This work is in the public domain and free of copyright. Anyone may read, download and share it.
- EPUB 12 MB
-
KINDLE Send to Kindle Send
- Download the EPUB file to this device.
- Open Amazon's Send to Kindle page, sign in, and add the file. Open Send to Kindle (opens in a new tab)
On a phone: open the downloaded EPUB and share it to the Kindle app.
You can also email the file to your Kindle address (it ends in @kindle.com) from an email address you approved in your Amazon account.
- PDF 19 MB
Downloads start right away. How to open EPUB on your phone
Book facts
- First published
- 1847
- Reading time
- About 32 hours
- Pages
- 1,336
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Gothic Horror
- Formats
- PDF, EPUB, Read online