L. (Lily) Dougall

Born in Montreal on April 16, 1858, Lily Dougall was the youngest of nine children in a prominent Presbyterian newspaper family. She was educated in Montreal and New York, and later studied in Scotland, experiences that helped widen the outlook that would shape both her fiction and her religious writing.

Dougall began publishing fiction in the late 1880s, and her early novels won attention for their lively ideas and psychological depth. Though Canadian by birth, she spent much of her adult life in Britain, where she continued to write novels, essays, and religious works. Her career bridged literary and intellectual circles, and she was also associated with feminist thought.

She died in Cumnor, England, on October 9, 1923. Today she is remembered as a Canadian-born author whose work connected fiction, faith, and social questions in a way that still feels unusually modern for its time.