How do you posthumously credit the authors of public domain content in your adaptation?

Question

My question concerns the author Ben H. Winters who has recently published several books with himself listed as Jane Austen’s co-author. Sense and Sensibilities and Sea Monsters is one such novel adapting Sense and Sensibilities to a horror theme. Winters puts his name after Austen’s on the cover and in credits.

I would like to know if this is giving obligatory credit to the author of his borrowed content, or violating a copyrighted claim of another author. The copyright has lapsed, but does anything speak to protocol in crediting deceased contributing authors?

For example, if I were to place Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad into an alternate universe, keeping a very large part of his dialogue, but perhaps moving his 6-month promised land steamer cruise in 1859 to a Martian space cruise in the year 2359, would I need to claim co-authorship with Mark Twain?

Answer 1

Creative Commons has some guidelines for how to use Public Domain works.

They suggest giving credit to the original author, but not in a way that suggests said author endorses your work. In addition, the changes should be clearly marked. The standards for the crediting citation are that they “may be made in accordance with any relevant scientific, scholarly, disciplinary or community practice.”

Claiming someone co-authored a book with you implies that there was an intentional collaboration, which is certainly an endorsement. Those aware of who both authors are will know that's not the case, at least in the example in the question. But some people may not know. And for works that enter the public domain in other ways, the original author may still be alive and not happy that people think they collaborated on that project.

(While not entirely relevant to the question, I'd like to touch on how an author using public domain works can indicate changes. In the type of work in the question, it would be appropriate to label it as "based on" the public domain work, and summarize the changes in a foreword.)

To be clear, these are guidelines for "good citizenship" and are not necessarily legally binding. Could you get in legal trouble if you don't follow this (e.g. for false advertising)? I'm not sure, but I know that you can't go wrong being transparent in the way they suggest.