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For better or worse, I very rarely persevere reading anything that I'm not enjoying. For that reason, the only 19C British novel I've ever finished was Wuthering Heights, which though very long I must have enjoyed.
I was forced to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles at college, which I found to be over-long, over-descriptive (going on endlessly about fields, etc), and led by a character who did nothing to fight back. Yay! It didn't help that I was the only male in a class of females taught by a strident feminist. I took the wise choice of not actually reading Tess, but skimming it and finding some notes.
When the class did Hamlet, the class complained bitterly throughout and I think none of them actually read it (they whined a lot about the language), but referred to notes. I lapped it up. Ah, sweet revenge.
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