Gaston Leroux

For other people named Gaston Leroux, see Gaston Leroux (disambiguation).

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Gaston Leroux.

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. It was also the basis of the 1990 novel Phantom by Susan Kay.

Biography

Leroux was born in Paris.

Leroux 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 of an opera house in Paris, later to become a ballet house. The basement consisted of a cell that held prisoners in the Paris Commune, which were the rulers of Paris through much of the Franco-Prussian war.

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 America. Leroux died in Nice, France on April 15, 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 (1912)
• Le château noir (1914)
• Les étranges noces de Rouletabille (1914)
• Rouletabille chez Krupp (1917)
• Le crime de Rouletabille (1921)
• Rouletabille chez le Tzar (1913)

Adventures of Chéri-Bibi

• Chéri-bibi (1913)
• Chéri-Bibi et Cécily (1913)
• La nouvelle aurore: Palas et Chéri-Bibi & Fatalitas ! (1919)
• Le coup d' état de Chéri-Bibi (The New Idol, 1925)

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 (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)

External links

• Le parfum de la dame en noir, free french audio book 20px
• About Gaston Leroux
• Works by Gaston Leroux at Project Gutenberg
• Books and Biography of Leroux, Gaston
• L'univers de Joseph Rouletabille (in French)

• Everything about Phantom legend and his creator, Gaston Leroux
• Gaston Leroux At Find A Grave
• Template:Fr Gaston Leroux, his work in audio version