So, I found Stanza, an ereader for my iTouch. And I found Project Gutenberg, an online source for free books forever. Being rather overwhelmed at the choices and having no firm criteria beyond the book I'd just found, I decided to start at the beginning and see what they had.
Going alphabetically by author, we have Lisbeth Longfrock, by Hans Aanrud, written in 1907.
"Longfrock," by the way, refers to the nickname Lisbeth's brother gives her after a new dress is discovered to be far too long for the child, reaching all the way down to her toes.
This is your typical cute plucky orphan girl rises above her tragedies to achieve success story. I imagine it's very Heidi-esque, but I somehow never read Heidi, and avoided all the movies, so I don't exactly know if the plots match or if there are just a lot of mountains in both books.
Little Lisbeth is orphaned, after which she moves in with a kind neighbor woman who puts her to work, but treats her well. It's well written and has lots of interesting detail about the farming life in Norway (move the cows here, move the goats there), but doesn't exactly rise to the level of timeless literature. The amount of work required is more reflective of the nature of farming at that time and place than any desire to put Lisbeth through some sort of formative cruelty.
Another reflection of time and place may be found in the way the book ends. It seems taken for granted that Lisbeth's story will climax as she a) gets kind-of sort-of engaged to a local boy, b) is confirmed in the local church, and c) becomes head milkmaid at the farm where she was taken in.
Head milkmaid? Yeah. That's all you got. That's literally the last words of the book. She gets to be head milkmaid. I mean it's great that she's gotten past her mother's tragic death, survived childhood, and found her place in the world, but milkmaid?
Although, when I think about it, a book ending today with, "Guess what? You were totally elected prom queen!" would have a similar ending, structure-wise. So, it really does come down to time and place again. Who knows? Maybe the little Norweigan girls who read the story got to the end and closed the book with a happy little sigh.