2 Gaston Leroux first editions are documented on this shelf, from The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908) to The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) (1910) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Gaston Leroux title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Gaston Leroux copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room — 1908 · Pierre Lafitte et CieThe French first is an in-12 (approx. 17.8 x 11.8 cm) of 452 pages preceded by four unnumbered leaves (half-title, portrait, title, dedication), issued by Pierre Lafitte et Cie in January 1908 and complete with the portrait of Joseph Rouletabille by José Simont printed on glazed white paper. The 1908 volume is otherwise unillustrated — this is the key separator, because Lafitte issued a fully illustrated edition…. The true first is the French-language original: Pierre Lafitte et Cie, Paris, January 1908, following twelve-part serialisation in the supplement of L'Illustration, 7 September to 30 November 1907. Both the French original and the first English translation are collected. The first English-language book edition is Brentano's, New York, 1908 (recorded as 3 June 1908) — a Haycraft-Queen cornerstone title in its own…. No book-club issue is documented for the 1908 printings. The dominant reprint tells are the 1909 Lafitte illustrated edition (plates by Loevy and Simont — a 'first thus', not the first), the later Eveleigh Nash & Grayson (London) 1926 edition in blue cloth lettered gilt, and twentieth-century reprint-series issues of the Brentano's translation.
The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) — 1910 · Pierre Lafitte & Cie, ParisThe first printing carries NO edition statement on the title page ('sans mention d'édition'). The diagnostic first-state text error is on page 400, which reads 'fatal rocher' where it should read 'fatal nocher'; this was corrected from the second edition onward, so a copy without the error is not the first printing regardless of what the wrapper claims. Collation is 12mo (roughly 171-188 x 108-120 mm), 520 pages…. The French original has clear precedence and the census claim is confirmed: Paris, Pierre Lafitte & Cie, March 1910, preceded only by the serial run in Le Gaulois, 23 September 1909 to 8 January 1910. Both 1911 English editions are collected and both used Alexander Teixeira de Mattos's translation: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis/New York (first US — with André Castaigne plates, one single-page and four…. The dominant reprint trap is the Grosset & Dunlap photoplay edition, New York, 1925, issued for the Universal/Lon Chaney silent film: it retains the 1911 Bobbs-Merrill copyright date on the verso, which is exactly what fools buyers into thinking it a first. Identify it by the Grosset & Dunlap imprint on title page and spine, black-and-white film stills on coated stock, red cloth with black lettering, and the….

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