[ Collins / The Frozen Deep ]
Wilkie Collins was a popular English author of novels, short stories, and plays, one of which he co-wrote with his mentor and very good friend Charles Dickens. While Edgar Allan Poe is often credited with inventing the detective story, Collin's 1868 novel The Moonstone is widely regarded as the first detective novel.
The Frozen Deep is a play by Collins, with substantial input from Charles Dickens, who performed in the play several times. Written in 1856, the play was performed multiple times, including for Queen Victoria; it was privately published in 1866. Later performances of the play met with little success, so Collins re-wrote the work as a short story, and often used it in his public reading performances.
This work, something of a tragic love story, was inspired by the fate of the tragic 1845 Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage, in which two ships and their crews were lost. Some of the action takes place in Newfoundland, where one of the characters makes the following remark, the only reference to Newfoundland dogs in the story.
Another man in my place might be inclined to say that this Newfoundland boat-house was rather a sloppy, slimy, draughty, fishy sort of a habitation to take shelter in. Another man might object to perpetual Newfoundland fogs, perpetual Newfoundland cod-fish, and perpetual Newfoundland dogs. We had some very nice bears at the North Pole. Never mind! it's all one to me — I don't grumble."
How anybody could object to perpetual Newfoundland dogs is beyond me.