Gaston Leroux - The Man With the Black Feather

Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was born on May 6th, 1868, in Paris, France. Leroux was schooled in Normandy and went to Paris to study Law where he graduated in 1889. As a young man he inherited a fortune, valued even then in the millions of francs, and lived excessively until it was almost all quickly spent. In 1890, he began working as a court reporter and theater critic for L'Écho de Paris. He became an international correspondent for Le Matin and covered perhaps his most important story in 1905 when he witnessed and wrote about the Russian Revolution. Lerouxs' reporting instincts were also used for in-depth coverage of the former Paris Opera being used as cells to house prisoners of the Paris Commune in the basement. He abruptly switched careers in 1907 to write fiction. His first effort was the Mystery of the Yellow Room. This was the first in a series of the Adventures of Rouletabillet. From then until the mid-1920s he wrote prolifically, becoming a firm favourite to his French audience and increasingly to a growing market abroad thanks to the numerous translations and his growing reputation. By 1919, Leroux had seen the potential in the growing film industry and together with Arthur Bernède they formed a film company, Société des Cinéromans, to publish novels and simultaneously turn them into films. As an author Leroux works are placed alongside Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's in the United Kingdom and Edgar Allan Poe's in the United States. His Phantom of the Opera is one of the world's classic treasures and is constantly being adapted into other media; from films and TV to radio as well as an audiobook. Leroux was honoured by the French State with a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur in 1902. Gaston Leroux died in Nice, in Southern France, on April 15th, 1927.