Late in this novel, much of which is a satire on the Gothic fiction popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the heroine Catherine Morland visits the hero (and her burgeoning love interest), Henry Tilney, at his parsonage, where she finds him "with the friends of his solitude, a large Newfoundland puppy and two or three terriers. . . . " This is the only reference to Newfoundlands in the novel.


Mentions of dogs are common in Austen's novels, dealing as they do with the lives of upper-middle and upper-class characters for whom the possession of dogs would have been something close to obligatory — no sporting gentleman of the upper classes would be without pointing or retrieving dogs, if not a pack of hounds — but this mention of a "Newfoundland puppy" is one of the few breed-specific references in Austen, whose characters usually discuss "pointers" or "terriers" or "hounds" in more generic ways. (One of the few other breed-specific references in Austen is in Mansfield Park, in which the comically inert Lady Bertram makes multiple references to her pug.)

The fact Henry Tilney, one of Austen's most positive and likeable male characters, is specifically said to own a Newfoundland is surely meant — as those of us who own Newfies already know — to be the ultimate proof that Henry is indeed a wonderful person ;)


Northanger Abbey was written in 1798-99 but not published until 1818, one year after Austen's death.


There are several film/TV adaptations of this novel; the only one I have so far seen is the 2007 version made for the Masterpiece series on public television, directed by Jon Jones and starring Felicity Jones as Catherine and J. J. Feild (no, that's not a typo) as Henry Tilney. The scene with Henry's Newfoundland puppy is not, alas, in the movie.