Sweeney Todd "I'll polish him off". Lloyd published another, lengthier, penny part serial from 1847–48, with 92 episodes. It was then published in book form in 1850 as "The String of Pearls", subtitled "The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance". This expanded version of the story was 732 pages long. A plagiarised version of this book appeared in the United States c. 1852–53 as "Sweeney Todd: or the Ruffian Barber. A Tale of Terror of the Seas and the Mysteries of the City" by "Captain Merry" (a pseudonym for American author Harry Hazel, 1814–89). In 1865 the French novelist Paul H.C.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street she told him: "Oh God – I didn't know this was what ["Sweeney Todd"] was about. It's nothing to do with Grand Guignol. It's the story of your [own] life." What Sondheim thought of as "a small horror piece" eventually became a colossal portrait of the Industrial Revolution in the hands of director Hal Prince. At first, Prince was not interested in directing the show; to him it was just another melodrama, not very experimental structurally. Then he discovered a metaphor which expanded the story into an essay on the human condition. On the stage of the Uris Theater in