how to handle primary & other authors for adapted works?

In cleaning up some author pages, I'm frequently encountering works -- usually classic novels -- that have been shortened or adapted for children, or sometimes for language-learners. Often the children's versions are marketed under the original author's name: examples would be the books in the Great Illustrated Classics series, where you find an adapted version of Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens.

It's often possible to track down the author who did the adaptation/abridgement, and I think it makes sense to add that info via the "other authors" feature. However, I'm wondering if we can get any consensus on what to do with the author of the original text (e.g. Dickens). On the one hand, I see some value in keeping the name of the original author, but on the other hand, I think this feature can be used to better indicate that the text has been changed and isn't (entirely or at all?) the original author's.

So three questions:
1) On an adapted version, where should the original author be listed?
- (a) as primary author
- (b) as a "main" author, with the adapter listed as primary author
- (c) as a secondary author
- (d) not at all
- (e) something else.... what?
2) If the original author is listed somewhere, what text should go in parentheses to describe his/her role?
3) On an adapted version, where should the adapting author be listed?
- (a) as primary author
- (b) as a "main" author, with the original text's author listed as primary author
- (c) as a secondary author
- (d) not at all
- (e) something else.... what?-

My own preliminary thoughts:
1 - leaning toward a or b
2 - maybe Other with free text such as "original author"
3 - leaning toward b in most cases

Adaptations seem to me a tougher case than other abridgments (such as an abridged version of Homer's Iliad) because adaptations for children or language learners are more likely to change and simplify the language, while keeping elements of the original plot, while abridged versions keep the original language but just cut some of it out. With the latter (abridged versions), the person doing the selection of what to include and not include seems more likely to be a secondary author or perhaps a second "main" author, but not the primary author. For adaptations, though, I'm not sure; I could see a case for adapter being primary, or being main.

Part of the difficulty, as I see it, is that some adaptations are more adapted than others, if that makes sense. For instance, Charles & Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare is a fairly clear case where the Lambs are primary authors and Shakespeare is probably more secondary than "main". Seymour Chwast's graphic Divine Comedy is probably a even clearer case of the "original" author (Dante) being so far from the adaptation as to be secondary.

I guess I don't think there can be a hard and fast rule on this.

IMO, if there's a work Abba, by Jones, and Smith produces a new work in the LT sense, The Shorter Version of Abba, without input from Jones, then Smith should be listed as a main author. Jones should only be listed as the sole author on works that he created, not works others created from his works. (Acknowledging, of course, that adapters and abridgers are frequently anonymous, and adding anonymous to a work as adapter is questionably useful in the LT scheme.)

2 - Yes, I wondered about that; whether this is just something that has to be decided case by case. But maybe we could come up with some broad guidelines, if not hard and fast rules? (And there's also the question of how to label the "original" author, regardless of what status that author has.)

Also, here I'm not talking about just any adaptation -- so not graphic novels or something else explicitly marketed as an adaptation -- but about the adaptations for children or language/reading levels. Even those, I know, can have greater or lesser degrees of adaptation, but still maybe we could come up with some guidelines for general types or degrees of adaptation.

So some examples:
- Great Illustrated Classics edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, listed as by Mark Twain
http://www.librarything.com/work/8128710
According to WorldCat, this is adapted by Deidre S. Laiken ; ill. by Pablo Marcos Studio.
From a comparison of the first few pages, the text is really not Twain's at all: just the plot.
Compare:
http://www.worldcat.org/title/adventures-of-tom-sawyer/oclc/748314183/viewport
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/74/74-h/p1.htm
I don't know this series, but I'd guess that many of the other books in it are similar: retellings of the story, but not the original language or writing.

- The Velveteen Rabbit
http://www.librarything.com/work/8734374
(I started filling out the authors on this one, which is what prompted this thread.)
This is a 32 page adaptation of Margery Williams' original book, which was maybe around 44 pages originally. I can't find page images online, so I'm not sure how different the adapted and original versions are.

ETA: so on these two examples, where if anywhere should Twain's and Williams' names, respectively, go?

Jones should only be listed as the sole author on works that he created, not works others created from his works.
Agreed that the original shouldn't be the sole author on an adapted work in which s/he had no say, but what I'm asking about is listing multiple authors, and which author should be where. Should the original author be there somewhere, alongside the adapter, and if so, where, and how labeled?

Another thought: we could borrow from IMDB and list "story" next to the original author.

Here are some slightly different adaptation situations I’d like to know how to handle. These are plays in which the reviser, taking a pre-existing play and leaving large stretches of the original more or less as is, has made cuts, written some new material, and fiddled with the existing dialogue to make a “new” play.

One example recently came to my attention when I was working on the page of Jacobean playwright George Chapman, and I saw a listing for a play called “Old City Manners”. I know all of Chapman’s plays at least by title but this was new to me. I tracked it down and found that it was an 18th century revision of Chapman, Jonson & Marston’s Eastward Ho and was catalogued on LT in the Legacy Library of Donald and Mary Hyde as by Chapman. Here’s how the Folger lists it:

Old city manners. A comedy. Altered from the original Eastward hoe, written by Ben Jonson, Chapman, and Marston. By Mrs Lennox. As it is performed at the Theatre-Royal, in Drury-Lane by Charlotte Lennox

Feeling my way, I entered Chapman, Jonson and Marston with the roles “Original Author” and Lennox as “Reviser”. I think that’s ok; but I made Chapman the primary, mostly because that’s the way the Hyde library had it. On second thought, I should have made Lennox the primary (and perhaps called her Adapter instead of Reviser) and made the other three Main “Original Authors”. What think ye?

Another well-known example would be the Duke of Buckingham’s adaptation of John Fletcher’s The Chances. Most of Fletcher’s text stands but Buckingham cut a whole act, wrote a little bit of new material and touched up here and there. Here’s how the Folger lists it:

The chances: a comedy; as it is acted at the Theatre-Royal in Smock-Alley. Written by Beaumont and Fletcher; and altered by his Grace the Duke of Buckingham by Duke of George Villiers Buckingham

Fletcher or Buckingham as primary? But the other as main, right? And roles Original Author and Adapter?

Finally the one act play Poor Jack, c1926. This was concocted by Ben Abramson from James Branch Cabell’s short story “Love-Letters of Falstaff”. So Abramson’s the primary, right? But almost all the dialogue is just transcribed word for word from Cabell’s story, so Cabell is in a real way part-author of the play. What do you call him? “Source author”?