Thomas Hardy 
Tess of the D’Urbervilles 

<b>The novel is set in impoverished rural Wessex during the Long Depression.<b> Tess is the oldest child of John and Joan Durbeyfield, uneducated rural peasants. One day, Parson Tringham informs John that he has noble blood.<br>Tringham, an amateur genealogist, has discovered that Durbeyfield is a corruption of DUrberville, the surname of a noble Norman family