If I am citing a work based on another person's writings, should I cite both authors in my works-cited-list entry?

If I am citing a work based on another person’s writings, should I cite both authors in my works-cited-list entry?

Note: This post relates to content in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. For up-to-date guidance, see the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook.

No. When you cite a work, you should list the creator of the version of the work you are using.

Many works are based on the writings of others. To name a few examples, James Joyce’s Ulysses is based on Homer’s The Odyssey, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea is based on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Sophie Hannah’s The Monogram Murders is based on Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mystery novels. If you were citing the works by Joyce, Rhys, and Hannah, you would list these authors’ names in your works-cited-list entry.

If you wanted your reader to know on whose writings the works are based, you could provide that information in your prose or in a note.