Gaston Leroux was a french novelist, best known for his works (The Phantom of the Opera), which later became famous in various film and stage renditions. After leaving school, Leroux worked as a clerk in a law office and began writing essays and short stories. In the early 1900s he began writing novels, his first success being (The Mystery of the Yellow Room), starring the amateur detective Joseph Rouletabille. A number of sequels followed, none quite so successful. In 1910 "The Phantom of the Opera" received only moderate sales and somewhat poor reviews, although Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Phantom of the Opera (1986) brought Leroux's novel renewed fame.

A hideously disfigured composer, who lives in seclusion beneath the Paris Opera House, becomes a Svengali figure to young singer Christine Daaâe, moulding her into a star performer. But his obsessive love for Christine is unrequited and when he fears she will be lost to him, his jealousy endangers everyone. Gaston Leroux's Phantom is one of literature's most famous tragic outsiders, inspiring fear and pity in an enthralling tale of fixation and thwarted passion.