Deathday: Gaston Leroux, "The Phantom of the Opera"

 

Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux (6 May 1868 – 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, such as the 1925 film starring Lon Chaney; and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical.

Biography

Gaston Leroux was born in Paris in 1868. He went to school in Normandy and studied law in Paris, graduating in 1889. He inherited millions of francs and lived wildly until he nearly reached bankruptcy. Then in 1890, he began working as a court reporter and theater critic for L'Écho de Paris. His most important journalism came when he began working as an international correspondent for the Paris newspaper Le Matin. In 1905 he was present at and covered the Russian Revolution.

Another case he was present at involved the investigation and deep coverage[clarification needed] of the former Paris Opera (presently housing the Paris Ballet). The basement contained a cell that held prisoners of the Paris Commune.

He suddenly left journalism in 1907, and began writing fiction. In 1909, he and Arthur Bernède formed their own film company, Société des Cinéromans to simultaneously publish novels and turn them into films. He first wrote a mystery novel entitled Le mystère de la chambre jaune (1908; The Mystery of the Yellow Room), starring the amateur detective Joseph Rouletabille. Leroux's contribution to French detective fiction is considered a parallel to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's in the United Kingdom and Edgar Allan Poe's in the United States.

Leroux died in Nice, France on 15 April 1927, of a urinary tract infection.

 

Novels

The Adventures of Joseph Rouletabille
Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907)
Le parfum de la dame en noir (The Perfume of the Lady in Black, 1908)
Rouletabille chez le Tsar (The Secret of the Night, 1913)
Rouletabille à la guerre (1914) consisting of
Le château noir
Les étranges noces de Rouletabille
Rouletabille chez Krupp (1917)
Le crime de Rouletabille (1921)
Rouletabille chez les Bohémiens (1922)
The Mystery of William Shakespeare.


Other novels

Le petit marchand de romme de terre frites (1897)
Un homme dans la nuit (1897)
Les trois souhaits (1902)
Une petite tête (1902)
La double vie de Théophraste Longuet (1903)
Le roi mystère (1908)
L'homme qui a vu le diable (1908)
Le lys (1909)
Le fauteuil hanté (1909)
La reine de Sabbat (1910)
Le fantôme de l'Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera, 1910)
Balaoo (Balaoo, 1911)
Le dîner des bustes (1911)
La hache d'or (1912)
L' épouse du soleil (1912)
Première aventures de chéri-Bibi (1913)
La colonne infernale (1916)
Confitou (1916)
L' homme qui revient de loin (1916)
Le capitaine Hyx - La bataille invisible (1917)
Le coeur cambriolé (1920)
Le sept de trèfle (1921)
La poupée sanglante - La machine à assassiner (1923)
Le Noël du petit Vincent-Vincent (1924)
Not'olympe (1924)
Les ténébreuses: La fin d'un monde & du sang sur la Néva (1924)
Hardis-Gras ou le fils des trois pères (1924)
La coquette punie ou la farouche aventure (1924)
La femme au collier de velours (1924)
La mansarde en or (1925)
Les Mohicans de Babel (1926)
Les chasseurs de danses (1927)
Mister Flow (1927)
Pouloulou (1990, posthumous)