Gothic Horror PDF EPUB

The String of Pearls

by Thomas Peckett Prest, James Malcolm Rymer

Downloads: Under 100
First published: 1847
Pages: 1,336

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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.

About the author

Thomas Peckett Prest, James Malcolm Rymer

Thomas Peckett Prest and James Malcolm Rymer were prolific Victorian authors of penny dreadfuls, the cheap serialized thrillers of nineteenth-century Britain. Between them they created enduring popular myths including Sweeney Todd and Varney the Vampire.

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