Sweeney Todd: The Barber of Fleet Street (1846-1847) is a penny dreadful novel by British writers James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest. Originally serialized in cheap volumes, the novel marks the debut of Sweeney Todd, a villain whose story inspired Stephen Sondheim’s legendary musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), which won a Tony Award for Best Musical and an Olivier Award for Best New Musical before serving as source material for Tim Burton’s 2007 film of the same name.

In London in 1785, a young sailor named Lieutenant Thornhill goes missing while on leave. Last seen on Fleet Street while entering the barber shop of Sweeney Todd, his mysterious disappearance inspires Colonel Jeffrey, a friend, to investigate. Discovering that Thornhill was carrying with him a pearl necklace for Johanna Oakley, the lover of a man lost at sea, Jeffrey questions the young girl. Disturbed by his story, and moved by Thornhill’s honorable intentions, Johanna offers her help in his search. Suspicious of Todd, who has recently lost an assistant to a local insane asylum, she dresses as a young boy and goes to his barber shop to apply for the position. There, she begins to uncover Todd’s secret operation, whereby murdering his unsuspecting patrons, he transports their bodies to Mrs. Lovett’s shop to be turned into cheap meat pies. Sweeney Todd: The Barber of Fleet Street is a grisly penny dreadful novel, a quick-witted work of horror that has inspired several successful adaptations.

This edition of Sweeney Todd: The Barber of Fleet Street by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest is a classic of British horror fiction reimagined for modern readers.

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