What became of them
These books
in culture.
34 of these works were filmed, staged, broadcast or drawn — 273 versions between them, the earliest from 1792. Each has a page of its own: what was made of it, when, and by whom, with the edition to read it in.
- Frankenstein Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley The most filmed novel in this library, and almost none of it looks like the book. 1910–2025 35 versions
- Carmen Prosper Mérimée Everyone knows the opera. The novella it came from is shorter, colder and far more brutal. 1915–2022 25 versions
- The Phantom of the Opera Gaston Leroux A newspaper serial that became a silent film, then a monster, then the longest-running musical in Broadway history. 1916–2011 18 versions
- Manon Lescaut Abbé Prévost A novel of 1731 that two of the greatest opera composers set within nine years of each other. 1914–2013 16 versions
- The Turn of the Screw Henry James Fifteen screen versions and an opera, and no two of them agree on what happens. 1954–2020 16 versions
- The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The book that started a fashion, a panic, and a moral argument that has never quite finished. 1792–2024 15 versions
- Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray Twelve screen versions of a novel whose narrator will not let you like anybody. 1911–2005 12 versions
- The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky Filmed from 1921 onward, and once transplanted whole to postwar Japan. 1921–2011 11 versions
- Emma Jane Austen Eight versions, including one that moved the whole thing to Beverly Hills and lost nothing. 1948–2020 10 versions
- The Scarlet Pimpernel Baroness Orczy The play came before the novel, and the disguise came before every hero who has used one since. 1917–1982 9 versions
- The Lost World Arthur Conan Doyle The 1925 film taught cinema how to put a dinosaur on screen, and the animator went straight on to King Kong. 1925–2001 8 versions
- A Study in Scarlet Arthur Conan Doyle The first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, and the least filmed of his cases for a reason. 1914–2010 7 versions
- Quo Vadis Henryk Sienkiewicz Filmed in the first year of the century and roughly once a generation since. 1901–2001 6 versions
- Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen Ang Lee’s film won Emma Thompson an Oscar for the screenplay — and it has been remade in Tamil and in Spanish since. 1996–2011 6 versions
- The Gambler Fyodor Dostoevsky Written in twenty-six days to escape a contract, and later made into an opera by Prokofiev. 1919–2016 6 versions
- Bleak House Charles Dickens The oldest surviving film of a Dickens character is a minute of this book, shot in 1901. 1901–1920 5 versions
- Father Goriot Honoré de Balzac Balzac’s King Lear, filmed in four languages across a century. 1915–2004 5 versions
- Persuasion Jane Austen Austen’s last finished novel, filmed five times, and the quietest thing she wrote. 1960–2022 5 versions
- The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald Filmed since 1926, and the 1926 version is lost — Fitzgerald’s wife walked out of it. 1926–2013 5 versions
- The Jewel of Seven Stars Bram Stoker Stoker’s other monster. Filmed five times, and never once under its own name until late. 1971–2014 5 versions
- If I Were King Justin H. McCarthy A play about François Villon that became an operetta, a Barrymore vehicle and a Preston Sturges script. 1923–1938 4 versions
- Mansfield Park Jane Austen The Austen novel adaptations argue with, because its heroine will not perform. 2000–2007 4 versions
- The Black Tulip Alexandre Dumas Dumas without the swords — although the 1964 film gave him some anyway. 1920–1964 4 versions
- The Magic Skin Honoré de Balzac A wish-granting talisman that shrinks with every wish. Filmed, staged and set to music. 2010 4 versions
- The Princess of Cleves Madame de La Fayette A novel of 1678 that French cinema keeps rewriting, most recently as a story about schoolchildren. 1961–2008 4 versions
- The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad Hitchcock filmed it as Sabotage, and then regretted the one scene everybody remembers. 1937–1996 4 versions
- A Damsel in Distress P. G. Wodehouse Wodehouse adapted his own novel, and George and Ira Gershwin wrote the songs. 1919–1937 3 versions
- Captain Blood Rafael Sabatini The film that made Errol Flynn a star overnight, from a novel by a man who wrote it in a hurry. 1924–1991 3 versions
- East Lynne Mrs. Henry Wood The sensation novel of its age, and the source of a line every Victorian could quote. 1913–1982 3 versions
- Ferragus, Chief of the Dévorants Honoré de Balzac Filmed three times in the silent era, when Paris crime serials were the most popular thing in cinema. 1910–1923 3 versions
- Northanger Abbey Jane Austen A parody of gothic novels, filmed by people who mostly played it straight. 1987–2007 3 versions
- The Aspern Papers Henry James A novella about a literary scavenger, turned into an opera and filmed with Vanessa Redgrave. 1971–2018 3 versions
- The Beast in the Jungle Henry James A story in which nothing happens, which two French directors have now filmed anyway. 1980–2024 3 versions
- The Last Days of Pompeii Edward Bulwer-Lytton The novel that invented the disaster epic, and the Italian film industry that took it up. 1909–1959 3 versions