Literary adaptations

Why is it that when television and film production companies decide to adapt a nineteenth century novel it tends to be either Charles Dickens or Jane Austen?

I know there has been countless adaptations of Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, but in most cases, they stray from the originals outrageously that they are almost not worth one’s notice here.  And to notice them would only add weight to my argument anyway.

The countless Dickens and Austen adaptions there have been have kept closely to the originals.  And when they do adapt Dickens, it is usually the same half dozen or so.

If adapting a period drama they should broaden their horizons.

Mary Braddon and Ellen Wood equalled Dickens in sales and popularity (and possibly eclipsed him, if truth were told).  If either of them are adapted, they rather lazily opt for Lady Audley’s Secret or East Lynne.

I am really surprised no one has bothered to adapt Benjamin Disraeli’s Coningsby or Sybil, for instance.  Not only are they powerful dramas and fluffy romances, but the satire is savage and sophisticated and the humour hilarious.

Likewise the tales and novels of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.  If you ignore the trifles concerning leprechauns and fairies, much of his other works would make brilliantly dark dramas and sparkling comedies.

And as for Maria Edgeworth, isn’t it about time someone adapted her Castle Rackrent, or Ennui?

I am sure many an actress would kill to portray a character like troubled socialite Lady Delacoeur or independent-minded Belinda Portman, from Belinda.  Both of them are groundbreaking characters; one for making breast cancer a central feature and topical subject in a romance novel; and the other for seriously contemplating an inter-racial marriage as late or early as pre-emancipation 1801 (more groundbreaking, however, was the inter-racial marriage between a footman and a maid, which the author played down as to be practically an insignificant incident hardly worth notice except as perhaps a binary opposition to the central characters).

I could add other authors to this, but I have already exceeded the word length.