Venture into Fleet Street and discover the dark side of Victorian London where you'll encounter the demon barber Sweeney Todd and his menacing accomplice Mrs Lovett in this classic thriller. Gruesome mysteries are uncovered when Lieutenant Thornhill goes missing after entering Todd's barber shop for a haircut. Londoners are disappearing, Todd's young apprentice Tobias is subject to constant fear and abuse, and the barber's grows more peculiar as the days go by. Menace and murder abounds in this terrifying tale where criminals hide in plain sight and threaten to harm anyone who could get in the way of their schemes. Famously adapted to the big screen by Tim Burton, Sweeney Todd is a classic of British horror writing and its legendary villain remains iconic this day.
Author
James Malcolm Rymer was a British nineteenth century writer of penny dreadfuls, and is the probable author of Varney the Vampire, often attributed to fellow writer Thomas Peckett Prest, and co-author (with Prest) of The String of Pearls, in which the notorious villain Sweeney Todd makes his literary debut. Information about Rymer is sketchy. In the London Directory for 1841 he is listed as a civil engineer, living at 42 Burton Street, and the British Museum catalogue mentions him in 1842 as editing the Queen's Magazine. Between 1842 to the 1867 he wrote up to 115 popular novels for the English bookseller and publisher, Edward Lloyd, including the best-sellers Ada the Betrayed, Varney the Vampyre and The String of Pearls. Rymer's novels appeared in England under his own name as well as anagrammatic pseudonyms such as Malcolm J. Errym and Malcolm J. Merry. He died on 11 August 1884 and is buried in Kensal Green cemetery, west London.
