In Winifred Holtby's South Riding, published in 1936,  Lydia Holly is the eldest daughter of a large and poor family living in a converted railway carriage.  She is 'an untidy fat loutish girl in a torn overall' - but she shows evident signs of cleverness, and her mother sees this.  "Her mother  was a fighter; her mother had insisted  that she take the second chance of a scholarship to Kiplington High School.  When she was eleven she had  won a place at Kiplington, but her parents had needed her to escort her small sisters to the village school, so she had missed her chance.  Now Daisy was old enough to…