The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance

Before the musical and the movies, Sweeney Todd was born here, in a Victorian penny dreadful serialized for readers who wanted their shudders cheap and weekly. Todd keeps a barber shop on Fleet Street where certain customers (the prosperous, unaccompanied kind) sit down for a shave and are never seen again. Nearby, Mrs. Lovett's pie shop enjoys a reputation for meat pies of mysterious excellence, and a string of pearls belonging to a missing sailor begins surfacing in all the wrong hands.

Against Todd stand a devoted young woman determined to learn what happened to the man she loves, a suspicious magistrate, and Todd's own terrified apprentice. It is melodrama by the yard (trapdoors, madhouses, cliffhangers) and at forty-plus hours it is a gloriously lurid marathon: the authentic, unpolished original of one of horror's most famous legends.

At roughly 405,600 words, The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance runs about 45 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance is in the public domain, so the complete text is free on Project Gutenberg and LoudReader has the entire Project Gutenberg catalog built in. To listen:

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