Esther Waters

Esther Waters, a plain, honest girl from a strict religious family, goes into service at Woodview, a country house whose owners live for horse-racing. Seduced by William, a footman, and abandoned when she becomes pregnant, she is dismissed and goes to London, where she fights through workhouses, hard jobs as a wet nurse and servant, and the scorn of employers to raise her son. When William returns, now a publican and bookmaker, she must choose her life again.

George Moore (1852–1933), an Irish novelist influenced by Zola, published the novel in 1894, and its sympathetic, realistic portrait of a servant and unmarried mother was banned by some libraries but praised by Gladstone. Compare Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.