Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in serialized Victorian popular fiction, known as "penny dreadfuls". A story called "The String of Pearls" was published in a weekly magazine during the winter of 1846-47. Set in 1785, the story featured as its principal villain a certain Sweeney Todd and included all the plot elements that were used by Sondheim and others ever since. The murderous barber’s story proved instantly popular – it was turned into a play before the ending had even been revealed in print. An expanded edition appeared in 1850, an American version in 1852, a new play in 1865. By the 1870s, Sweeney Todd
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