TALES TOLD BY A DOG (COMMENT).

TALES TOLD BY A DOG (COMMENT). I posted earlier this week that, contrary to a claim by John Sutherland that the first canine narrator was in a Kipling story in 1930, Mark Twain had used a canine narrator in 1903. Helen commented here that are lots of Victorian examples of dogs as narrators and listed a few (going back to 1854) she found by what seems to me the ingenious technique of googling “dog” and “my mistress.” What is striking is that, as this wikipedia article notes, John Sutherland is an authority on Victorian fiction who often writes about oversights by authors. On occasion, “apparent slips on the part of the author are presented as evidence that something is going on beyond the surface of the book which is not explicitly described (such as his explanation for why Sherlock Holmes should mis-address Miss Stoner as Miss Roylott in ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band”).'” Was there some reason for the oversight (other than a possible reviewer’s error)?