James Malcolm Rymer, The String of Pearls: A Romance

Rebecca Nesvet (University of Wisconsin, Green Bay)

Ed. by Grace Moore, University of Otago
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Jessica Gossling (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1846 - 1847

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
Romance

Resources

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“One of the most famous Londoners of all time” (Mack,

Wonderful

xvi), Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, is a fixture of metropolitan mythology. According to urban legend, sometime in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, Todd keeps a shop in Fleet Street, surrounded by the lawyers of Temple Bar. In the privacy of his shop, he murders many of his customers and disposes of their remains with the help of a woman who manages a nearby meat-pie shop. She turns the incriminating material into filling for meat-pies, on which countless Londoners naively dined until the pair’s apprehension. While Todd never actually existed, he has captured the artistic imagination in a variety of media including prose, stage drama, musical theatre, film, and even a neo-Dadaist collage art…

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1337 words

Citation: Nesvet, Rebecca. "The String of Pearls: A Romance". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 August 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=24980, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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