The Gothic Lineage
Illustration (AI-generated): Inside the Paris Opera at night: a huge crystal chandelier hanging over an empty gilded auditorium, one box (Box Five) with its curtain stirring, a red velvet curtain, a single ghost-light on the stage.

Works · Novel · 1909

The Phantom of the Opera

by Gaston Leroux

First appeared 23 Sep 1909 – 8 Jan 1910 in Le Gaulois

Nocturne plate · illustration (AI-generated, 2026)

Full title: Le Fantome de l'Opera (The Phantom of the Opera)

Backstage at the Paris Opera, the chorus girls whisper about a ghost who owns Box Five and sends the managers orders on paper. When the old directors retire, the new ones laugh, until a singer falls ill and the young Christine Daae steps in and sings as nobody had thought she could. Her childhood friend, the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, wants to marry her. Christine says an invisible Angel of Music has been teaching her at night, and a chandelier crashes into the auditorium. The narrator, who claims to have gone through the Opera’s archives and cellars, sets out to prove that the ghost has a body and a history.

Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.

Prologue. Checked against Project Gutenberg ebook #175 (English translation of 1911 (translator not named in the Gutenberg file; credited to Alexander Teixeira de Mattos by Standard Ebooks); this is not Leroux’s French text)

Attribution and scope

Originally French. English quotations here are from the 1911 English translation; the translator is credited as Alexander Teixeira de Mattos by Standard Ebooks and a bookseller, but the Gutenberg file and the 1911 US edition scan do not name him.

Facts

  1. The novel opens with a Prologue in which the narrator insists, as an investigator who went through the Opera’s archives, that the Opera ghost ‘really existed’ in flesh and blood, adding that the events ‘do not date more than thirty years’ before his inquiry.[5]
  2. Leroux came to the novel from journalism: the BnF records him as a lawyer who became a court reporter for L’Echo de Paris and a reporter for Le Matin, and EBSCO notes his first Rouletabille novel, The Mystery of the Yellow Room, appeared in L’Illustration on 7 September 1907.[6][7]
  3. The standard English text is a 1911 translation: the US edition, illustrated by Andre Castaigne and copyrighted by Bobbs-Merrill, carries a Translator’s Note but no translator’s name, while Standard Ebooks credits Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.[3][4]

Setting

Paris, events the Prologue says ‘do not date more than thirty years’ before the narrator’s inquiry[5]

  • the Paris Opera (Palais Garnier)
  • Paris

Themes

Notes on dates 4 notes on disputed dates and attribution
  1. Leroux’s death date: the BnF authority record says 15 April 1927; EBSCO says 16 April. BnF is followed (see his author entry).
  2. Britannica dates the serial to 1910; the Library of Congress gives the Le Gaulois run as 23 Sep 1909 – 8 Jan 1910.[2][1]
  3. Anchor year: 1909, the first public appearance (the Le Gaulois serial), not the 1910 volume or the 1911 translation.
  4. Translator: the 1911 Gutenberg file and the Bobbs-Merrill scan do not name him; Standard Ebooks credits Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.

Threads

Threads in

No sourced relation to an earlier work is recorded.

Threads out

No sourced relation from a later work on this timeline is recorded.

Contemporaries

Works on the timeline that first appeared within three years of 1909, and the other writers alive when The Phantom of the Opera appeared (ages computed from sourced dates).

None within three years.

Alive at first appearance (23 Sep 1909)

Sources

  1. The Phantom of the Opera (Headlines and Heroes: Newspapers, Comics & More Fine Print). Library of Congress. Accessed 2026-10-09.
  2. The Phantom of the Opera (novel by Leroux). Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed 2026-10-09.
  3. The phantom of the opera, illustrated by Andre Castaigne (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, copyright 1911 Bobbs-Merrill; scan, includes a Translator's Note but no translator name). Internet Archive (Harold B. Lee Library, BYU). Accessed 2026-10-09.
  4. The Phantom of the Opera, trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (Standard Ebooks). Standard Ebooks. Accessed 2026-10-09.
  5. The Phantom of the Opera, English translation of Le Fantome de l'Opera (Project Gutenberg ebook #175; translator not named on the Gutenberg page). Project Gutenberg. Accessed 2026-10-09.
  6. Leroux, Gaston (1868-1927), BnF authority record. Bibliotheque nationale de France. Accessed 2026-10-09.
  7. Gaston Leroux (EBSCO Research Starters). EBSCO. Accessed 2026-10-09.