Well adults who read fiction are a minority to begin with. Especially males. So I’m talking about people who actually do read. Dickens is probably read by more people worldwide then anyone on the Best Seller list right now. And IMDB has 4 productions based on his work dated at 2012.
Joyce entered the public domain just recently...
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1231/1224309673276.html
Ulysses and FW would not be read unless it’s a class devoted to Joyce - which college students would take as an elective (willingly).
And I always have to wonder how many more adults would be reading if they hadn’t been taught that books suck in school. By shoving books at teenagers that teenagers are simply not able to read we lose whole generations. Luckily I was addicted to reading before the school got a chance to ruin it, so instead they only taught me some authors suck. But really if my first reading had been the stuff they push in school I wouldn’t be a reader today.
I doubt Dickens is read by more people today than anybody else. Maybe HAS been because you get the whole generational thing, but as for folks going to the store today to get books there’s a reason the best sellers are the best sellers and the best sellers are in the middle of the store and Dickens is over in the “classics literature” section which almost never has anybody in it. And as for the IMDB list, one of those is a British TV show, one is a short “inspired by” and also British, another is a full movie by BBC films, and finally a “characters” credit for a movie and the only distributor signed up is in the UAE. Like I said, if he was massively popular Hollywood would be ripping him off more.
I’m sure there’s some lit classes throwing Ulysses or FW at unsuspecting youths.