A Village Tragedy by Margaret L. Woods (1889)

 The most distinctive thing about this is the voice of the author. Where a lot of female authors of this period conformed to various entrenched stereotypes - the wit, the romantic, and so on - Woods has a more forthright tenor. This story of a young woman 'rescued' by family in Oxfordshire from a grim London tenement after her father dies benefits from the author's unflinching directness. She seems to me to be typifiable as a midpoint between Hardy and Kipling, to use male exemplars (as there are far fewer female ones). More stripped out than Hardy, more fated and rural than Kipling. Annie soon realises that her uncle and aunt are not going to be an easy ride, though on the whole she's still happy. A growing feeling for one of the other workers on the farm, an ex-workhouse boy named Jesse, is what brings the climax. Despite complete innocence of all wrongdoing, she is seen entering his house alone and staying a good while. The proverbial ton of bricks descends. Turfed out, she is alone in the world, and lacking all resources. In the end, with the promise of marriage at some unspecified time, she is persuaded by Jesse to come and live with him. Her indignation at the unfair accusations of misconduct has been emphasized. So it is quite a strange move on Woods' part to silently drop this angle and have her suddenly get pregnant. This hoop jumped, we are party to the difficulties Annie and Jesse face in obtaining information about the legal necessaries for marriage and permission to start the process. But things look up, and the pregnancy continues healthily. Jesse returns on the train from going to buy the ring, and is crossing the line to return home when he is wiped out by an express. From this grim point it is only a matter of time until heartbroken and undermined Annie, having just given birth, and panicking about the baby being sent to the ever-threatening workhouse, wanders away from the house in a drastically weakened state and collapses to her death on the riverbank. There are moments when Woods' strong voice shrieks a little - descriptions of characters which are too jagged or oversimplified. But on the whole this is that dangerous thing, a promising beginning.