'I daresay I shall get through my trouble somehow.'
Esther Waters is a young, working-class woman with
strong religious beliefs who takes a position as a
kitchen-maid at a horse-racing estate. She is seduced
and abandoned, and forced to support herself and her
illegitimate child in any way that she can. The novel
depicts with extraordinary candour Esther's struggles
against prejudice and injustice, and the growth of her
character as she determines to protect her son. Her
moving story is set against the backdrop of a world of
horse racing, betting, and public houses, whose vivid
depiction led James Joyce to call Esther Waters 'the
best novel of modern English life'. Controversial and
influential on its first appearance in 1894, the book
opened up a new direction for the English realist
tradition. Unflinching in its depiction of the dark and
sordid side of Victorian culture, it remains one of the
great novels of London life and labour in the 1890s.
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