"Ruth" by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell is a novel published in 1853. When fifteen-year-old orphan Ruth Hilton is seduced and abandoned by a wealthy gentleman, she finds herself pregnant and cast out from respectable society. Taken in by a compassionate minister and his sister, Ruth is given a new identity as a widow to protect her from scandal. As she builds a life as a governess and nurse, her past threatens to surface, forcing a reckoning with Victorian society's harsh judgment of fallen women. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
These books are free to read. Each is in the public domain in the United States; check your own country's rules before you copy or share one.
