James Malcolm Rymer

James Malcolm Rymer (1814–1884) was a Scottish-born writer of penny fiction in Victorian London, among the most productive authors of the serials sold in weekly installments to working-class readers. Trained as a civil engineer and draughtsman, he turned to writing in the 1840s for the publisher Edward Lloyd, producing under his own name and anagrams such as Malcolm J. Errym the sprawling Varney the Vampyre and, almost certainly, The String of Pearls (1846–1847), the story that introduced Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street. He wrote more than a hundred such romances and died a prosperous man.