Margaret Dixon McDougall was an Irish-born writer, poet, and journalist who built her literary career in Canada and the United States. Born Margaret Moran Dixon in Belfast, she immigrated to Canada with her family in her twenties. Following her marriage to Alexander Dougald McDougal in 1852, she raised a family in Ontario, living in Pembroke and Clarence during the 1860s and 1870s. She began publishing her writing during this period, occasionally using the pen name Norah Pembroke.
McDougall's literary output spanned poetry, journalism, and fiction. In 1880, she published her poetry collection, Verses and Rhymes by the Way. Shortly thereafter, she returned to Northern Ireland as a foreign correspondent for both the Montreal Witness and the New York Witness. Her dispatches from this period, which focused on Irish social and political conditions, were compiled and published in 1882 as The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through Ireland. She followed this success with her 1883 novel, Days of a Life, which was also set in Ireland.
Following the death of her husband in 1887, McDougall relocated to the United States. She dedicated her later years to religious service, working with the American Baptist Home Mission Society in Michigan before moving to Montesano, Washington, in 1893 to continue her church work. She passed away in Seattle in 1899.
