Penguin Pocket Classics the String of Pearls: A Romance. This item is unavailable.Penguin Pocket Classics the String of Pearls: A Romance

Beware the blood-soaked razor of Sweeney Todd, demon barber of Fleet Street! Johanna Oakley's lover, Mark, has gone missing in suspicious circumstances. And the man who was meant to deliver Mark's last gift to her, a string of pearls, has gone missing too - last seen entering the barber-shop of Sweeney Todd. In desperation, Johanna decides to dress up as a boy in order to gain access to Todd's premises. There, in a fetid underground crypt, she will discover the grisly truth about what has really happened to Sweeney Todd's unsuspecting customers - and what they have to do with Mrs Lovett, famed maker of the most delicious pies in London ...

Thomas Preskett Prest (probable dates 1810-1859) was a British hack writer, journalist and musician. He was a prolific producer of penny dreadfuls. He is now remembered as the creator of the fictional Sweeney Todd, the 'demon barber' immortalized in his The String of Pearls: A Romance. He has also been associated with the authorship of Varney the Vampire, now more often thought to be the work of J. M. Rymer. He wrote under pseudonyms including Bos, a takeoff of Charles Dickens' own pen name, Boz. Before joining Edward Lloyd's publishing factory, Prest had made a name for himself as a talented musician and composer.