| Main entry | Dougall, Lily |
|---|
| Birth place | Montreal, Quebec |
|---|
| Birth date | 16 April 1858 |
|---|
| Death place | Cumnor, Berkshire, England |
|---|
| Death date | 9 October 1923 |
|---|
| Identifier | 0265 |
|---|
| Birth name | Lily Dougall |
|---|
| Alternate names | L. Dougall; Ernest Duns |
|---|
| Marital status | single |
|---|
| Religious affiliation | Congregational; Episcopalian; Broad Church; Anglican Modernist |
|---|
| Degree and date | LLA (Lady Literate in Arts, equivalent of an MA), St. Andrew's University |
|---|
| Paid work | editor, THE WORLD WIDE |
|---|
| Biography | Born into a large and prominent Montreal family, Lily Dougall (1858-1923) grew up in the stately family home belonging her maternal grandfather, sugar mogul John Redpath. As the publisher of the Montreal WITNESS, Lily's father, John Dougall (1808-1886), brought literary interests into the home, as well as an effervescent evangelicalism that occasionally led to neglecting business affairs and ensuing financial strain. Nevertheless, Lily received a fine education, initially through private instruction, and later through schooling in Brooklyn, New York. The heightened religious environment of her family home contributed to Lily's youthful suffering from psychosomatic illnesses, and in 1880, she escaped her anxiety via a trip to Scotland, where she enrolled in classes taught by faculty from the University of Edinburgh. Upon her return home, she cared for her ailing mother until the latter's death in 1883, after which Lily returned to live with an aunt in Edinburgh. After receiving an LLA from St. Andrew's University in the late 1880s, she moved to England and wrote (though never published) an autobiographical novel, "Lovereen, A Canadian Novel," which discusses many of the tensions she experienced during her first three decades of life. To hone her literary skills, and as a continuation of her Christian experience, she sufficiently mastered ancient Greek so that she could read the New Testament in its original language. The combination of writing and a strong religious commitment carried through to other family members, as well: her brother, John Redpath Dougall, published THE WORLD WIDE, which Lily edited, and her cousin and friend, Amy Redpath Roddick,* was also a writer. Despite early spiritual confusion, Lily eventually credited her father with modelling liberal theology in the family home, which seems to have allowed her to understand her spirituality as both important and necessarily feminine. Her appreciation for sisterhood and for women led to a life-long relationship with Sophie Earp, whom Lily met while attending Sophie's lecture at Cheltenham's Ladies College. While Sophie fulfilled many of Lily's editorial and secretarial needs, their relationship was more than professional—the women shared a home together and in death, were buried together. While she supported many of the advances being made by women, her novel MADONNA OF A DAY registers her disapproval of the "New Woman" who goes so far as to drink and smoke. Although Lily spent much of her adult life in the United Kingdom, her Canadian experience found its way into print with four of her twelve novels set in Canada. Her later volumes focus on religious explorations inspired by the scholarly Broad Church movement and Anglican Modernism. Prior to her death from heart failure in 1923, Lily led a flourishing life in Cumnor, England, overlooking Oxford. Perhaps finally confident in the perspectives she had reached, she spent her final years facilitating vibrant literary and religious exchange at engagements held at her home and in the surrounding community. |
|---|
| Travel | Montreal, 1906; New York, 1921; Quebec, 1923 |
|---|
| Other notes | Lily grew up in a large family, with at least three brothers and five sisters. Joanna E. Dean's RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND THE NEW WOMAN: THE LIFE OF LILY DOUGALL (2007) offers a well-researched and in-depth biography of Dougall. |
|---|
| Residences | Montreal, Quebec (1858-);
New York (1870, 1880);
Edinburgh, Scotland (1880, 1881);
Montreal (1881-1883)
Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire (1883);
Edinburgh (1883-)
England (c1887-);
Switzerland (1888-1889)
Montreal, Quebec (1897-1903);
Exmouth, England (1903-)
Cumnor, Berkshire, England (1911-1923) |
|---|
| Geographic regions | Quebec; England |
|---|
| Primary genres | fiction; non-fiction; poetry |
|---|
| Books | BEGGARS ALL (1891); WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS (1893); THE MADONNA OF A DAY (1895); THE MERMAID: A LOVE TALE (1895); A QUESTION OF FAITH (1895); THE ZEIT-GEIST (1895); A DOZEN WAYS OF LOVE (1897) reprinted as YOUNG LOVE: AND OTHER STORIES (1904); THE MORMON PROPHET (1899); PRO CHRISTO ET ECCLESIA (1900); THE EARTHLY PURGATORY (1904) published in the USA as THE SUMMIT HOUSE MYSTERY: OR, THE EARTHLY PURGATORY (1905); THE SPANISH DOWRY: A ROMANCE (1906); CHRISTUS FUTURUS (1907) published in the USA as THE CHRIST THAT IS TO BE; PATHS OF THE RIGHTEOUS (1908); MODERN JOURNALISM: EVERY WOMAN'S RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS IT (1909); ABSENTE REO (1910); VOLUNTAS DEI (1912); THE PRACTICE OF CHRISTIANITY (1913); THE REMOVING OF MOUNTAINS (1915); THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF HEALTH (1916); ACCADES AMBO: VERSES (1919) with Gilbert Sheldon; THE LORD OF THOUGHT (1922) with Cyril William Emmet; GOD'S WAY WITH MAN (1924) |
|---|
| Periodicals | CITY SPARROWS; THE CITY; THE COMMONWEALTH; CONTEMPORARY REVIEW; THE DOME; THE FRIEND; HIBBERT JOURNAL; THE INTERPRETER; LONGMAN'S MAGAZINE; THE MODERN CHURCHMAN; MONTHLY REVIEW; PRESENT DAY PAPERS; THE ROAD |
|---|
| Other publications | "Home and Social Life" in WOMEN OF CANADA, 1900: THEIR LIFE AND WORK; for other collaborative works, including books and pamphlets, see full bibliography in RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND THE NEW WOMAN (2007) by Joanna E. Dean |
|---|
| Organizations | Ladies' Union Club (London), Woman Writer's Club (London) |
|---|
| Father's name | John Dougall |
|---|
| Life dates of father | 8 July 1808, Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland - 19 August 1886 Queens, New York; m. 1840 |
|---|
| Father's note | founder and publisher, MONTREAL WITNESS; wire manufacturer; immigrated 1826; co-founder of Montreal Temperance Society |
|---|
| Mother's name | Elizabeth ("Betsy") Redpath |
|---|
| Life dates of mother | 12 September 1819, Montreal - 9 November 1883, Montreal; m. 1840 |
|---|
| Mother's note | Sister of Peter Redpath, the "sugar King" and McGill benefactor; invalid |
|---|
| Biographical references | Canadian Encyclopedia; Dictionary of Literary Biography 92; Dagg, THE FEMININE GAZE (2001), pp. 87-88; Dean, RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND THE NEW WOMAN: THE LIFE OF LILY DOUGALL (2006); 1861 Census of Canada; 1880 United States Federal Census; 1881 Scotland Census; 1901 Census of Canada; Canada, Ocean Arrivals (Form 30A), 1919-1924; Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935; England & Wales, Death Index: 1916-2005; England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1861-1941; New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957; Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967 |
|---|
| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 59, 276, 779; National Union Catalogue |
|---|
| Research references | complete |
|---|
| Archival references | papers and letters, Dougall Family Papers, National Archives of Canada; 29 letters to Macmillan Company (1908-1923), Macmillan Archives, University of Reading Library; Lily Dougall papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford University; letters to W.W. Campbell, Queen's University Archives; correspondence, Department of Rare Books and Special Papers, McGill University; correspondence, British Library; correspondence, Rare Books, The Templeman Library, University of Kent |
|---|
| Image credits | Image from Henry Morgan, TYPES OF CANADIAN WOMEN (Toronto: Briggs, 1903). |
|---|
| Copyright | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014. |
|---|