[ McCarthy / Dear Lady Disdain ]
Justin McCarthy (1830 - 1912) was an Irish novelist, historian, and politician. This book (the title is a line from Shakespeare) was first published serially in Gentleman's Magazine in 1875, from which the text below is taken. It was published in book form the next year, and republished several times.
The only reference to Newfoundlands comes when one of the principal characters thinks to herself that she has no romantic interest in a young man, Natty, who seems to be wooing her:
Marie now believed that she was only soothing an outburst of the morbid and half-crazy egotism of a self-conceited lad smarting under the memory of fancied humiliations. She would as soon have thought of her groom, or her Newfoundland dog, or old Merlin at Durewoods making love to her, as of Mrs. Cramp's Natty. (232, August 1875 issue)
This is the only mention of Newfoundlands in this novel.