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 New York, this tale of horrors was transformed into a mountain of steel in motion. Prince's scenic metaphor for "Sweeney Todd" was a 19th-century iron foundry moved from Rhode Island and reassembled on the stage, which critic Jack Kroll aptly described as "part cathedral, part factory, part prison, that dwarfed and degraded the swarming denizens of the lower orders." The massive scope of Prince's setting went beyond even Sondheim's intentions. Sondheim admits that his conception of the show differed from that of Prince: "Hal's metaphor is that the factory turns out Sweeney Todds. It turns out soulless, defeated, hopeless people.