The World of Gaston Leroux and
The Phantom of the Opera
| 1841 | One of the works that will greatly influence Gaston Leroux’s writing—Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue—is published. |
| 1868 | Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux is born on May 6 in Paris to Dominique-Alfred Leroux and Marie Bidault. |
| 1871 | Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass is published. The Royal Albert Hall opens in London. |
| 1872 | George Eliot’s Middlemarch is published in book form. |
| 1874 | French novelist and critic Jules-Amédée Barbey d‘Aurevilly publishes Les Diaboliques (The Fiends). |
| 1883 | French naturalist writer Guy de Maupassant’s Une Vie (A Life) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island are published. |
| 1885 | H. Rider Haggard publishes King Solomon’s Mines. |
| 1886 | A good student, Leroux receives his baccalaureate degree in Normandy from the College d’Eu and then studies law in Paris. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is published. |
| 1887 | Spending much of his extracurricular time composing poetry and fiction, Leroux begins to publish his work in various journals. Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet , the first Sherlock Holmes story, is published. |
| 1888 | Jack the Ripper commits a rash of murders in London. |
| 1889 | Leroux is awarded a law degree and works as a law clerk; he spends his free time writing. |
| 1891 | Leroux works full-time as a journalist; he is a court reporter and arts critic for the newspaper L‘Écho de Paris. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is published. |
| 1893 | In December anarchist Auguste Vaillant throws a bomb into the Chamber of Deputies while it is in session. |
| 1894 | When Vaillant is sentenced to death by guillotine, Leroux reports the court decision in Le journal de Paris. On the strength of his report, the prestigious Paris daily Le Matin offers him a position; traveling as a correspondent for Le Matin until 1906, he covers stories from locations in Europe, Asia, and Africa. French president Sadi Carnot is assassinated. |
| 1895 | H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine is published. |
| 1897 | Bram Stoker’s Dracula is published. |
| 1899 | For Le Matin, Leroux covers the case against wrongfully convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus. |
| 1901 | Leroux receives a promotion and hefty salary increase from Le Matin. |
| 1902 | Estranged from his wife, Marie Lefranc, Leroux begins a long-term affair with Jeanne Cayatte. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is published. |
| 1904 | La Double Vie de Théophraste Longuet (The Double Life of Théophraste Longuet), Leroux’s first novel, is serialized in Le Matin. |
| 1905 | Leroux travels with Cayatte to Russia to report on the revolution. A son, André-Gaston, is born to the couple. Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel is published . |
| 1907 | Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room) is published to strong sales; it is the first of a series featuring investigative reporter Joseph Rouletabille. Leroux devotes himself to writing fiction. |
| 1908 | Le Parfum de la Dame en noir (The Perfume of the Lady in Black), the first sequel to The Mystery of the Yellow Room, is serialized in L’Illustration beginning in September and ending in January 1909. The region’s nice weather and elegant gambling halls inspire Leroux to move to the French Riviera. He and Cayatte have a daughter, Madeleine. |
| 1909 | Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera) is published serially in the newspaper Le Gaulois from September until January of the following year; the book’s tepid early reception offers no hint of its future fame and enduring popularity. |
| 1912 | Balaoo, about a mad scientist who turns an ape half human, is serialized in Le Matin. |
| 1913 | Balaoo is adapted for the cinema—the first of what will be more than twenty film versions of novels by Leroux. He begins publication in Le Matin of a new series of mysteries , starring the character Chéri-Bibi; after the Rouletabille stories, these are Leroux’s most successful. |
| 1914 | Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes is serialized. World War I begins. |
| 1917 | After obtaining a divorce from his first wife, Leroux marries Jeanne Cayatte. |
| 1918 | He writes the screenplay for a film, La Nouvelle Aurore (The New Dawn), that consists of sixteen 30-minute installments. World War I ends. |
| 1919 | La Nouvelle Aurore opens in Paris. Leroux forms a film company dedicated to producing serialized films but abandons the enterprise after three years. |
| 1920 | Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, is published. |
| 1925 | Universal Studios adapts The Phantom of the Opera as a silent film starring Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin. More film, stage, and television adaptations will follow, including , in 2004, a film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s popular 1986 musical. |
| 1927 | Gaston Leroux dies in April at his home in Nice one day after surgery for an attack of uremia. |