The Review was founded by Herbert L. Stewart, professor of philosophy at Dalhousie University, and the journal has been in continuous operation since then.

Since its inception, the Review has been receptive to diversity: to the work of political thinkers, historians, literary scholars, poets, and writers of fiction.

In the fifty-year period following Stewart's resignation (1947–97), The Dalhousie Review went through a variety of transformations in editorial emphasis and visual design, but without ever abandoning the direction chosen by its first editor.

Contributors of articles and reviews during the later period include Norman Ward, Peter Waite, George Woodcock, Mavor Moore, J. M. S. Tompkins, Owen Barfield, Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Atwood, James Doull, Juliet McMaster, Wilfrid Sellars, Peter Schwenger, John Fekete, and Daniel Woolf.

This list includes distinguished contributors from Great Britain (Barfield and Tompkins), Africa (Achebe and Gordimer), and the United States (Sellars)—a sign of the increasing globalization of intellectual culture during the period in question.