1889, The New Priest in Conception Bay by Robert Lowell

Title: The New Priest in Conception Bay (sometimes shown as The Story of the New Priest in Conception Bay).
Author: Robert Traill Spence Lowell (1816‑1891).
First edition: Boston: E.P. Dutton (1858) according to some sources.
Revised edition: Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1889.
This novel is set in “Conception Bay” (a Newfoundland locale) and is partly based on Lowell’s experience as a missionary at Bay Roberts, Newfoundland in the 1840s.

Lowell served as a missionary priest at Bay Roberts, Newfoundland (in the 1840s) and his time there forms the basis for the fictional setting “Peterport” in the novel
The novel depicts outport life in mid‑19th‑century Newfoundland: fishing communities, dialect, conflict of religious and social norms.
It is noted for being “the first attempt to capture the people of Newfoundland and their way of life on a literary canvas.”
Critical commentary notes the novel has strong sectarian biases (Protestant vs. Roman Catholic) and uses stylised dialect representation.

For Newfoundland & Labrador literature, this work holds historical importance as an early fictional treatment of Newfoundland outport life and dialect. Its location and characters reflect a missionary’s perspective of a remote community and provides a lens into 19th‑century Newfoundland society (fishing economy, settlement patterns, religious conflict).
For literary history, it shows how an American missionary used his Newfoundland experience as the basis of a novel and thus intersects with themes of colonialism, religion, and place.

Although the setting is Newfoundland, the author is not Newfoundland‐born but an American missionary, so the perspective is external.
The work contains religious bias and character stereotypes — for example, Catholic characters portrayed negatively — which modern readers should note. The dialect rendering is historic but may be considered problematic by contemporary standards.
If you’re using this for serious historical research, it may be best treated as fictionalised narrative with some basis in experience, rather than as pure factual social history.