[ Eliot / Middlemarch ]
George Eliot (1819 - 1880) was the pen name of English novelist, short story writer, journalist, and poet Mary Anne Evans, one of the most prominent Victorian writers.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest Victorian novels, this work explores gender and human failing in the fictional village of Middlemarch, and has only this reference to Newfoundlands, in Chapter 57:
The volume was Ivanhoe, and Jim was in the great archery scene at the tournament, but suffered much interruption from Ben, who had fetched his own old bow and arrows, and was making himself dreadfully disagreeable, Letty thought, by begging all present to observe his random shots, which no one wished to do except Brownie, the active-minded but probably shallow mongrel, while the grizzled Newfoundland lying in the sun looked on with the dull-eyed neutrality of extreme old age.