<Tr> <Th> Pages </Th> <Td> ~ 190 </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> OCLC </Th> <Td> 15698188 </Td> </Tr> <P> The Phantom of the Opera (French: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux . It was first published as a serialization in Le Gaulois from 23 September 1909, to 8 January 1910 . It was published in volume form in late March 1910 by Pierre Lafitte . The novel is partly inspired by historical events at the Paris Opera during the nineteenth century and an apocryphal tale concerning the use of a former ballet pupil's skeleton in Carl Maria von Weber's 1841 production of Der Freischütz . It has been successfully adapted into various stage and film adaptations, most notable of which are the 1925 film depiction featuring Lon Chaney, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical . </P> <P> Leroux first decided he would become a lawyer, but after he spent his inheritance gambling he became a reporter for L'Echo de Paris . At the paper he was asked to write about and critique dramas, as well as being a courtroom reporter . With his job, he was able to travel frequently, but then he came back to Paris where he became a writer . Because of his fascination with both Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he wrote a detective mystery entitled The Mystery of the Yellow Room in 1907, and four years later he published Le Fantôme de l'Opéra . The novel was first published within newspapers before finally being published as a novel in 1911 . </P>

What is the phantom of the opera based on