Gaston Leroux (1868–1927)
Author of The Phantom of the Opera
About the Author
Gaston Leroux is best known as the creator of the 1911 novel, The Phantom of the Opera, about a masked figure who haunts the hidden parts of the Paris Opera House. The novel appeared first in serial installments a year before publication, ultimately grew into several movie versions, and later show more became an Tony Award-winning Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Leroux was born in Paris in 1868. The only child of financially well-off parents, he moved easily into a clerk job in a law office. While working there, he wrote essays and short stories, many of which were accepted by publishers. This fired his enthusiasm, and he became a full-time reporter/writer in 1890. Law experience covering famous cases and theater reviews fueled his writing career, but it was his news reporter job that took him around the world at the turn of the century, providing details for his novels. Leroux wrote several mystery and fantasy novels, including the well-received The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907) and The Man Who Came Back from the Dead (1912). Leroux also helped pioneer the character of the amateur detective who solves crime, so commonly seen today in movies and television. Gaston Leroux continued to write until his death on April 16, 1927. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Carte de presse judiciaire parisienne de Gaston Leroux, 8 février 1894
Series
Works by Gaston Leroux
Lire et s'entraîner : Gaston Leroux : Le Fantôme de l'Opéra [book + sound recording] (2001) — Writer — 21 copies, 1 review
Emoji Phantom of the Opera: Epic Tales in Tiny Texts (Condensed Classics) (2017) 11 copies, 2 reviews
Reading & Training : Gaston Leroux : The phantom of the opera [book + sound recording] (2007) — Writer — 7 copies
Lire et s'entraîner : Gaston Leroux : Le Mystère de la Chambre Jaune [book + sound recording] (2003) — Writer — 6 copies
El fantasma de la opera/ The Phantom of the Opera (Clasicos Para Ninos/ Classics for Children) (Spanish Edition) (2005) 6 copies, 1 review
The Phantom of the Opera (Deluxe Hardcover) — Gaston Leroux’s Gothic Classic of Love, Obsession, and Mystery (2025) 6 copies
Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, Annotated and Illustrated (Oldstyle Tales' Gothic Novels) (2017) 4 copies
Level 5: The Phantom of the Opera Book and MP3 Pack (Pearson English Graded Readers) (2011) 3 copies
The Collected Works of Gaston Leroux: The Complete Works PergamonMedia (Highlights of World Literature) (2015) 3 copies
Dracula + Frankenstein + Phantom of the Opera (HORROR CLASSICS, 3 Volume Matched Set) (1965) 3 copies
Le fantôme de l'opéra FLE lecture facile CD audio 2è édition (Découverte classique) (French Edition) (2016) 2 copies
La Bataille invisible - Aventures effroyables de M. Herbert de Renich - Tome II (French Edition) (2013) 2 copies
Romans mystérieux : Le fantôme de l'opéra ; Le roi Mystère ; Le secret de la boîte à thé (2008) 2 copies
The Masked Man 2 copies
Il mistero della camera gialla. Il profumo della dama in nero. Il fantasma dell'Opera (1907) 2 copies
Το φάντασμα της όπερας 1 copy
O Fantasma da Óper 1 copy
Caro-Bibi y Cecilia 1 copy
Nouveaux exploits de rouletabille r. chez le tsar le château noir — Author — 1 copy
El rey del misterio 1 copy
Juodoji pilis 1 copy
Phantom of the Opera 1 copy
SECRETUL LUI TOTH 1 copy
La maison des juges — Author — 1 copy
Η στοιχειωμένη θέση 1 copy
El Fantasma de la Ópera 1 copy
Le fantôme de l'Opéra... 1 copy
L'auberge épouvantable 1 copy
1988 1 copy
Le mystère de la chambre jaune Lecture - niveau 3 B1 (Découverte classique) (French Edition) (2019) 1 copy
The Phantom of the Opera - 4 Short Stories By Gaston Leroux (Fantasy and Horror Classics) (2011) 1 copy
Not' Olympe 1 copy
Rouletabille chez les bohémiens. Tome 2: La pieuvre (Editions Pierre Lafitte, 1923, EO) (1923) 1 copy
THREE NOVEL COLLECTION: The Double Life; Balaoo; The Bride of the Sun (Timeless Wisdom Collection) (2017) 1 copy
Il Figlio di due razze 1 copy
muñeca sangrienta, La 1 copy
Contos pavorosos 1 copy
PREMIERS EXPLOITS DE ROULETABILLE/ I : LE MYSTERE DE LA CHAMBRE JAUNE + II : LE PARFUM DE LA DAME EN NOIR. (1961) 1 copy
The son of three fathers 1 copy
The new terror 1 copy
Skrivnost rumene sobe 1 copy
Operaens Hemmelighed 1 copy
Associated Works
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (2000) — Contributor, some editions — 317 copies, 11 reviews
Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown: A Treasury of Bizarre Tales Old and New (1993) — Contributor — 212 copies, 2 reviews
Murder on the Menu: Cordon Bleu Stories of Crime and Mystery, Volume 1 (1984) — Contributor — 211 copies, 2 reviews
The Phantom of the Opera: The Original 1987 London Cast Recording (2008) — Original book — 160 copies, 1 review
The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall [2011 TV presentation] (2011) — Original book — 133 copies
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: The Greatest Detective Stories: 1837-1914 (2019) — Contributor — 37 copies
Murder on the Menu: Cordon Bleu Stories of Crime and Mystery, Volume 2 (1993) — Contributor — 20 copies
The Locked-Room Mysteries (The Four Just Men, The Mystery of the Yellow Room, The Hollow Man) (2017) — Contributor — 18 copies, 1 review
Weird Tales Volume 14 Number 2, August 1929 — Contributor — 2 copies
Weird Tales Volume 19 Number 2, February 1932 — Contributor — 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Leroux, Gaston
- Legal name
- Leroux, Gaston Louis Alfred
- Birthdate
- 1868-05-06
- Date of death
- 1927-04-15
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Faculté de droit de Paris (Licence, Droit, 18 89))
Lycée de Caen, Calvados (Baccalauréat, 18 86)
Collège d'Eu, Seine-Maritime (1880) - Occupations
- journalist
theater critic
novelist
court reporter - Organizations
- Société des Cinéromans, Société de production cinématographique, Nice (Fondateur, 19 18)
La Matin, Journal (Chroniqueur judiciaire, 18 94 | 19 01, Grand reporter, 19 01)
L'écho de Paris (Chroniqueur judiciare, 18 91| 18 94)
Barreau d'avocat, Paris (18 90 | 18 94) - Awards and honors
- Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (1902)
- Short biography
- Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux (6 May 1868[1] – 15 April 1927) was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.
In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, 1910), which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, notably the 1925 film starring Lon Chaney, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical. His 1907 novel The Mystery of the Yellow Room is one of the most celebrated locked-room mysteries - Cause of death
- uremia
- Nationality
- France
- Birthplace
- Paris, Île-de-France, France
- Places of residence
- Paris, Île-de-France, France
Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France - Place of death
- Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France
- Burial location
- Cimetiére du Château, Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France
- Associated Place (for map)
- France
Members
Discussions
Phantom of the Opera By Gaston Leroux Sep 2021 LTER in Reviews of Early Reviewers Books (September 2021)
Reviews
The first thing to say is that this is late romantic tosh. The second thing is that the superb introduction (best read after the novel) and its cultural influence (a silent horror film and a musical both high in their respective canons) still makes it worth reading.
We can look it either as a cultural phenomenon or as literature. If we say that Gaston Leroux was first and foremost a journalist then we are saying that it is not in the first rank of literature but just a successful crowd show more pleaser suitable for its place and time - France before the First World War.
The basic story has its merits - the fantastification of the Paris Opera [Palais Granier] and the elaboration of reality (there is an underground 'lake' of sorts beneath the building and there was a Paris Commune that may have made use of the building) are truly Gothick.
The Phantom himself is a Gothick creation who lives in a simulacrum of the classical underworld. He plays the devil in relation to the innocent, young and exceptionally dim-witted heroine Christine Daae and her romantic lover, the almost as dim-witted and excitable aristocrat, Raoul de Chagny.
There are so many tropes being drawn together here - the Devil's trill, the divine nature of music, beauty and the beast, the possibility of redemption, the descent into Hades and the abduction of Proserpine - that one might mistake it for art.
Instead, it is a bit of a dog's dinner in which occult classical themes end up alongside camp comedy, bogeymen in graveyards, hidden doorways and trap doors, insane vengeance, emotions laid on with a trowel and a mad supervillain.
Introducing the whole is a lengthy process of trying to persuade us that music (opera in particular) is somehow at the very heights of human accomplishment where both the Phantom, though a dark force, as creator, and Daae, as performer, both sit.
The romantic tosh lies in the way these supreme achievers are drawn to each other and in how the performer must be rescued from the flawed creator. The book becomes an exercise in self-indulgent hysteria perfect for a controlled and repressed bourgeoisie. It is sub-Wagnerian in this respect.
I was tempted down the route of exposing some of the absurdities but nothing I say would deter its advocates. It is to be read not for its worth but precisely for that absurdity and its insight into what might have excited the French reading public looking for a thrill in 1910.
Typical would be the extended sequence introducing a bit of orientalism of an almost Fu Manchu nature. In fact, the oriental, 'the Persian', is a hero who enters the underworld to try and rescue Christine with Raoul but the aim seems only to give us a 'torture chamber' (an oriental cliche).
The 'torture chamber' is baroque in the extreme (the word absurd springs to mind again) with crisis after crisis similar to those that would be soon appearing in cinema serials - exciting certainly to its audience at the time no doubt but truly requiring the suspension of all critical faculties.
Indeed, the theatrical suspension of critical faculties - after all, this was written by a jobbing journalist! - is central to the novel which has started with the sort of passionate invocation of operatic theatricals that makes heavy-handed play of (you may have guessed this) Faust.
Yet, once you accept the theatrical nonsense, some longeurs from over-writing, broad and irrelevant comedy involving the Directors of the Opera and the utter lack of realism, it is possible to suspend judgement and go with the flow even if it is all rather ridiculous.
The novel sits in a no man's land, a grey area, where being appalled critically conflicts with a recognition that, although a little clumsy in places, it is a thriller fitted to its time and place, filled with sufficient incident and outrageous plot to inspire canonical films and musicals.
If you are going to read this, try and make sure you get the Penguin Classics Edition for the introduction. It may not entirely justify the book but it will explain it and in explaining it justify the time spent reading it. show less
We can look it either as a cultural phenomenon or as literature. If we say that Gaston Leroux was first and foremost a journalist then we are saying that it is not in the first rank of literature but just a successful crowd show more pleaser suitable for its place and time - France before the First World War.
The basic story has its merits - the fantastification of the Paris Opera [Palais Granier] and the elaboration of reality (there is an underground 'lake' of sorts beneath the building and there was a Paris Commune that may have made use of the building) are truly Gothick.
The Phantom himself is a Gothick creation who lives in a simulacrum of the classical underworld. He plays the devil in relation to the innocent, young and exceptionally dim-witted heroine Christine Daae and her romantic lover, the almost as dim-witted and excitable aristocrat, Raoul de Chagny.
There are so many tropes being drawn together here - the Devil's trill, the divine nature of music, beauty and the beast, the possibility of redemption, the descent into Hades and the abduction of Proserpine - that one might mistake it for art.
Instead, it is a bit of a dog's dinner in which occult classical themes end up alongside camp comedy, bogeymen in graveyards, hidden doorways and trap doors, insane vengeance, emotions laid on with a trowel and a mad supervillain.
Introducing the whole is a lengthy process of trying to persuade us that music (opera in particular) is somehow at the very heights of human accomplishment where both the Phantom, though a dark force, as creator, and Daae, as performer, both sit.
The romantic tosh lies in the way these supreme achievers are drawn to each other and in how the performer must be rescued from the flawed creator. The book becomes an exercise in self-indulgent hysteria perfect for a controlled and repressed bourgeoisie. It is sub-Wagnerian in this respect.
I was tempted down the route of exposing some of the absurdities but nothing I say would deter its advocates. It is to be read not for its worth but precisely for that absurdity and its insight into what might have excited the French reading public looking for a thrill in 1910.
Typical would be the extended sequence introducing a bit of orientalism of an almost Fu Manchu nature. In fact, the oriental, 'the Persian', is a hero who enters the underworld to try and rescue Christine with Raoul but the aim seems only to give us a 'torture chamber' (an oriental cliche).
The 'torture chamber' is baroque in the extreme (the word absurd springs to mind again) with crisis after crisis similar to those that would be soon appearing in cinema serials - exciting certainly to its audience at the time no doubt but truly requiring the suspension of all critical faculties.
Indeed, the theatrical suspension of critical faculties - after all, this was written by a jobbing journalist! - is central to the novel which has started with the sort of passionate invocation of operatic theatricals that makes heavy-handed play of (you may have guessed this) Faust.
Yet, once you accept the theatrical nonsense, some longeurs from over-writing, broad and irrelevant comedy involving the Directors of the Opera and the utter lack of realism, it is possible to suspend judgement and go with the flow even if it is all rather ridiculous.
The novel sits in a no man's land, a grey area, where being appalled critically conflicts with a recognition that, although a little clumsy in places, it is a thriller fitted to its time and place, filled with sufficient incident and outrageous plot to inspire canonical films and musicals.
If you are going to read this, try and make sure you get the Penguin Classics Edition for the introduction. It may not entirely justify the book but it will explain it and in explaining it justify the time spent reading it. show less
Part of the problem with locked room mysteries is that the narrative tends to sink into a morass of technical details provided so the reader can be absolutely sure that the room in question was, in fact, locked. In the case of the Yellow Room, a woman is attacked in her own bedroom. Her father and a loyal family servant hear a commotion and her cry for help, and attempt to break into the room. It takes a few minutes, during which they are standing at the door—the only way out of the room. show more They burst in, find the lady unconscious and bloody, and the room otherwise empty. Even the window is still locked and barred. There is nowhere for the perpetrator to hide, no way for him to have escaped, yet he is not in the room.
The solution to this mystery—who tried to kill the young woman and how he could have escaped—occupies the rest of the book, and Leroux takes great pains to explain just how impossible it was for anyone to have escaped unseen. He measures the dimensions of the bedroom, describes the construction of the door and the window, and offers the direction of the corridor and the height of the room from the ground below, going so far as to draw maps of the house’s layout for the reader’s edification. Various characters propose solutions, which the author then, in the character of Rouletabille, demolishes. One person suggests the father was in on it, another that the accomplice was the family servant. A family friend proposes that the would-be murderer hid in the mattress on the lady’s bed. (Rouletabille barely deigns to respond to this). A local magistrate suggests that the murderer slipped past the men while they were looking the other way. At one point, people start to suggest ghosts and apparitions. Rouletabille all but loses his temper:
"Novelists build mountains of stupidity out of a footprint on the sand, or from an impression of a hand on the wall. That’s the way innocent men are brought to prison. It might convince an examining magistrate or the head of a detective department, but it’s not proof. You writers forget that what the senses furnish is not proof. If I am taking cognisance of what is offered me by my senses I do so but to bring the results within the circle of my reason. That circle may be the most circumscribed, but if it is, it has this advantage—it holds nothing but the truth! Yes, I swear that I have never used the evidence of the senses but as servants to my reason. I have never permitted them to become my master. They have not made of me that monstrous thing,—worse than a blind man,—a man who sees falsely."
What is it that Sherlock Holmes used to say? When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever left, however improbable, must be the truth.
The particular triumph of The Mystery of the Yellow Room, the reason Leroux might be justified in his claim to have one-upped Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle and Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, and the reason why the book is still cited by aficionados as one of the great locked room mysteries of all time, lies in the answer to how the would-be murderer escaped that room. Poe and Doyle each wrote their own locked room stories, of course. And in each case the solution is exotic, to say the least: strange animals loose in the night, secret passageways and hidden doors.
Leroux dispenses with all such fantastic devices. The police spend a fair amount of time searching for trap doors and secret passages, but Rouletabille is confident at the outset no such thing will be found. Instead, the author relies on misdirection to trap the unwary reader, who would do well to remember Roulatabille’s somewhat heated admonishment: “You writers forget that what the senses furnish is not proof.”
All good mysteries take advantage of that disconnect between what we see and what we expect to see, and this one does so to wonderful effect. The men of the house behold a woman swooning on the floor, but no assailant in the room, and begin to think of supernatural explanations. Rouletabille sees the same picture, but deduces something far more ordinary, logical, and mundane. His reasoning is absolutely sound, but most readers will have to wait for the denouement at the end of the novel to discover it.
At which point, 99 out of a hundred readers will exclaim, “Oh!” and the novel, which up to this point has been a strange collection of testimonies and seemingly sinister coincidences, will suddenly resolve itself into a highly satisfying mystery story.
Read full profile here show less
The solution to this mystery—who tried to kill the young woman and how he could have escaped—occupies the rest of the book, and Leroux takes great pains to explain just how impossible it was for anyone to have escaped unseen. He measures the dimensions of the bedroom, describes the construction of the door and the window, and offers the direction of the corridor and the height of the room from the ground below, going so far as to draw maps of the house’s layout for the reader’s edification. Various characters propose solutions, which the author then, in the character of Rouletabille, demolishes. One person suggests the father was in on it, another that the accomplice was the family servant. A family friend proposes that the would-be murderer hid in the mattress on the lady’s bed. (Rouletabille barely deigns to respond to this). A local magistrate suggests that the murderer slipped past the men while they were looking the other way. At one point, people start to suggest ghosts and apparitions. Rouletabille all but loses his temper:
"Novelists build mountains of stupidity out of a footprint on the sand, or from an impression of a hand on the wall. That’s the way innocent men are brought to prison. It might convince an examining magistrate or the head of a detective department, but it’s not proof. You writers forget that what the senses furnish is not proof. If I am taking cognisance of what is offered me by my senses I do so but to bring the results within the circle of my reason. That circle may be the most circumscribed, but if it is, it has this advantage—it holds nothing but the truth! Yes, I swear that I have never used the evidence of the senses but as servants to my reason. I have never permitted them to become my master. They have not made of me that monstrous thing,—worse than a blind man,—a man who sees falsely."
What is it that Sherlock Holmes used to say? When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever left, however improbable, must be the truth.
The particular triumph of The Mystery of the Yellow Room, the reason Leroux might be justified in his claim to have one-upped Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle and Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, and the reason why the book is still cited by aficionados as one of the great locked room mysteries of all time, lies in the answer to how the would-be murderer escaped that room. Poe and Doyle each wrote their own locked room stories, of course. And in each case the solution is exotic, to say the least: strange animals loose in the night, secret passageways and hidden doors.
Leroux dispenses with all such fantastic devices. The police spend a fair amount of time searching for trap doors and secret passages, but Rouletabille is confident at the outset no such thing will be found. Instead, the author relies on misdirection to trap the unwary reader, who would do well to remember Roulatabille’s somewhat heated admonishment: “You writers forget that what the senses furnish is not proof.”
All good mysteries take advantage of that disconnect between what we see and what we expect to see, and this one does so to wonderful effect. The men of the house behold a woman swooning on the floor, but no assailant in the room, and begin to think of supernatural explanations. Rouletabille sees the same picture, but deduces something far more ordinary, logical, and mundane. His reasoning is absolutely sound, but most readers will have to wait for the denouement at the end of the novel to discover it.
At which point, 99 out of a hundred readers will exclaim, “Oh!” and the novel, which up to this point has been a strange collection of testimonies and seemingly sinister coincidences, will suddenly resolve itself into a highly satisfying mystery story.
Read full profile here show less
Well that was a lot funnier than i expected. I've read the Discworld parody of this story 'Masquerade', but had no idea how close it sticks to the source material. Also given how funny this is in places, it hardly seems worth doing a parody of.
Its like when Scary Movie came out after Scream, which was practically a horror parody by itself.
Of course its not all laughs, there's murders and romance too but the story is just as operatic as the setting which keeps even the deaths from making show more things very scary or dark.
The only problem is the structure, it goes back in time a lot to show the same events from another perspective, this can be both good and bad.
In addition the ending might feel a little anti-climatic to some but it didn't bother me much. show less
Its like when Scary Movie came out after Scream, which was practically a horror parody by itself.
Of course its not all laughs, there's murders and romance too but the story is just as operatic as the setting which keeps even the deaths from making show more things very scary or dark.
The only problem is the structure, it goes back in time a lot to show the same events from another perspective, this can be both good and bad.
In addition the ending might feel a little anti-climatic to some but it didn't bother me much. show less
This book is a mess. It was first published in serial form under the title “Le chercheur des trésors” for the magazine Le Matin, and this shows in the repetitions and reminders to the readers. The treasure hunt was a marketing gimmick for the paper, which apparently hid clues to prizes cached in Paris in the series instalments. At any rate, the treasure mentioned in the first chapters is completely ignored until chapter 26, and ignored again after its finder is killed.
So what is this show more about? Naïve, inoffensive Théophraste Longuet has retired from his rubberstamp business and wants to educate himself in the history of Paris, so he visits the notorious Conciergerie prison with his wife and best friend. They soon notice a strange change in his behaviour, and it becomes obvious that a second soul inhabits Théo’s body: the famous 18th century bandit Cartouche. They seek help from a noted spiritualist, but the criminal proves hard to shake, and poor Théo even finds himself on an extended stay in the subterranean fields of Paris among a strange people, the Talpa.
The author as journalist pretends to build his story from a variety of papers written by different people and offered to him by Théo’s best friend and executor. The style of the various sections changes with every witness-contributor, commented with a sharp and often nasty pen by the compiler. There’s a “psychic surgery” intended to get rid of Cartouche, a truly hideous description of Cartouche’s torture in the dungeons of the Conciergerie which also affects Théo, more nastiness whenever Cartouche’s soul takes over and reenacts his crimes in modern-day Paris, and then the final, absurd episode when Théo and police commissioner Mifroid drop into the catacombs and Mifroid spouts the latest scientific fads much in the manner of Dickens’ Mr Gradgrind. The story remains an episodic hodgepodge, and some of the scenes need a strong stomach. The author also exercises a cruel wit at the expense of his characters. It left me wondering what Leroux had been smoking or drinking when he concocted this.
ETA: The ebook was very carefully formatted and transcribed. show less
So what is this show more about? Naïve, inoffensive Théophraste Longuet has retired from his rubberstamp business and wants to educate himself in the history of Paris, so he visits the notorious Conciergerie prison with his wife and best friend. They soon notice a strange change in his behaviour, and it becomes obvious that a second soul inhabits Théo’s body: the famous 18th century bandit Cartouche. They seek help from a noted spiritualist, but the criminal proves hard to shake, and poor Théo even finds himself on an extended stay in the subterranean fields of Paris among a strange people, the Talpa.
The author as journalist pretends to build his story from a variety of papers written by different people and offered to him by Théo’s best friend and executor. The style of the various sections changes with every witness-contributor, commented with a sharp and often nasty pen by the compiler. There’s a “psychic surgery” intended to get rid of Cartouche, a truly hideous description of Cartouche’s torture in the dungeons of the Conciergerie which also affects Théo, more nastiness whenever Cartouche’s soul takes over and reenacts his crimes in modern-day Paris, and then the final, absurd episode when Théo and police commissioner Mifroid drop into the catacombs and Mifroid spouts the latest scientific fads much in the manner of Dickens’ Mr Gradgrind. The story remains an episodic hodgepodge, and some of the scenes need a strong stomach. The author also exercises a cruel wit at the expense of his characters. It left me wondering what Leroux had been smoking or drinking when he concocted this.
ETA: The ebook was very carefully formatted and transcribed. show less
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