He began writing stories in the style of Aleksanre Dumas and Victor Hugo. In the early 1900s he began writing novels, his first success being Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (1907; The Mystery of the Yellow Room). In 1910 The Phantom of the Opera appeared serially (before publication as a novel) and received only moderate sales and somewhat poor reviews. Leroux published several other novels and a few plays but, except among mystery aficionados, never achieved wide fame as a writer of horror and crime stories.