I have started reading Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell. It's odd. When I started reading it, it seemed not very different to some present day writers. for example Anne Tyler. Then, as I continued, I thought you would not have a plot turn on a wife dying in childbirth, or a child dying of scarlet fever in a realistic, 21st century book. I think Gaskell points out better than Dickens how proper poor many people really were. The Bartons and Miss Wilson seemed quite middle class to me, but not when you read how much of theit income it took to buy food. In one chapter, a Miss Wilson invited two young girls for tea. The little bit of tea, butter and bread cost her half a morning's wages, and she had difficulty finding enough crockery to serve it on. One thing that is not like a present-day book is the way Gaskell starts commenting on the scenes she has just written. For example, she describes how angry John Barton is with the factory bosses because a child of his died through lack of substanance when he was out of work. Then she seems to anticipate her middle-class readers' objections and write that this is how the working classes felt, whether or not they were justified in feeling it. Then in a following chapter, a girl sings a song about working-class woe set in Lancashire. I've seen songs written out in other books, so that was not so surprising, but then Gaskell starts writing about how you would have had to be there to appreciate it properly, and how the singer was as good as some more famous singer of the time that nobody had ever heard of these days.
I gather this book is considered an interesting failure. I have read that it goes wrong in the second half. It is quite good so far.