![]() ![]() Leroux was a music critic and uses his knowledge of the musical cannon and the behind the scenes workings of a theatre to frame his story which he tells through a narrator. ![]() In essence a pot-pouri of a novel, part drama, part gothic horror romance, murder mystery, fairy story, comedy. Suffice it to say that the original novel is packed not only with all the elements for which M & S became famous/notorious – romance between a junior aristocrat and a poor girl forced to earn her living in the theatre, danger, mystery, adversity and the final triumph of love, but it also includes comedy, exoticism, gothic horror, the supernatural, a fairy godmother figure, a wicked witch and historical fact. Most of you will have seen Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical (1986) based on the story, or an earlier film version (1925, illustrated above), so I won’t go into the story. ![]() After much ado trying to find a title which I could verify was actually published first by M & B and which was not exorbitantly expensive, I lit upon Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. ![]() I wanted to source an early title for the session on books produced by Mills & Boon publishers at the beginning of their existence. ![]()
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