For many years, the oldest known film adapted from Charles Dickens was “Scrooge or Marley’s Ghost” based on A Christmas Carol. The 5-minute film was made in 1901 and, being so short, rather glosses over the meat of the story – I guess the director assumed that most people would know the important part and so he instead focused on some very dazzling special effects (for the time).

The first 3 glorious minutes are available to watch on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/ScroogeOrMarleysGhost1901

But in 2012, an even earlier film was found. “The Death of Poor Joe” is only one minute, and shows the tragic death of the young streetsweeper in Bleak House.

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1422278/

(You’ll need to register to watch it.)

There’s only 10 months between the two films, so perhaps we can call it a draw.