Dalhousie Review

About Dalhousie Review

The Dalhousie Review — Journal Profile

The Dalhousie Review (ISSN 0011-5827) is a Canadian literary journal based at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and one of the oldest literary journals in Atlantic Canada. Founded in 1921 and in continuous operation ever since, according to Dalhousie University's own account, it has lived two lives inside a single title. In its early decades it was a quarterly of ideas — scholarly essays by political thinkers, historians and literary scholars, with a strong Atlantic Canadian focus. In the second half of the twentieth century it broadened into the form it keeps today: a triannual literary magazine publishing poetry, short fiction, non-fiction and reviews alongside literary essays, welcoming established and emerging writers from Canada and around the world. The university's Department of English, which publishes the journal, describes it plainly as Dalhousie's literary journal and as a professional creative writing periodical, and that description — literary magazine with scholarly roots, rather than a conventional research journal — is the correct starting point for understanding it.

That hybrid character explains the journal's unusual contributor list across a century. Its early pages carried figures such as Archibald MacMechan, Sir Robert Borden, Eliza Ritchie, E. J. Pratt, Douglas Bush, Charles G. D. Roberts, Frederick Philip Grove, Hugh MacLennan, Hilda Neatby, Eugene Forsey, Thomas Raddall and Earle Birney. Its later pages carried fiction and poetry by Norman Ward, George Woodcock, Mavor Moore, Owen Barfield, Miriam Waddington, Alden Nowlan, Malcolm Lowry, Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Atwood and Guy Vanderhaeghe, names the university itself highlights in the journal's history. Few Canadian periodicals can show a contributor roll that runs from a former prime minister and the founding figures of Canadian literature to two Nobel laureates in literature. This profile sets out the journal's history, its present editorial arrangements, exactly what it publishes and how writers submit to it, and how its modest bibliometric record should — and should not — be interpreted.

Quick Facts

History: Founded in 1921 by Herbert L. Stewart

The journal was founded in 1921 by Herbert L. Stewart, a professor of philosophy at Dalhousie University, who edited it for twenty-six years, until January 1947. Stewart set a direction that his successors kept even as the journal's form changed: a review receptive, from its first years, to political thought, history, literary scholarship, poetry and fiction, and anchored in Halifax and the Atlantic region while publishing far beyond it. The Dalhousie University history of the journal notes that it began with a strong Atlantic Canadian focus, printing philosophical articles and literary criticism alongside material of interest to Halifax and the region, and early contributors included leading Canadian public and literary figures of the day — among them Sir Robert Borden, Canada's wartime prime minister, the poets E. J. Pratt and Charles G. D. Roberts, and the novelists Frederick Philip Grove, Hugh MacLennan and Thomas Raddall.

In the fifty years after Stewart's resignation, the journal went through changes of editorial emphasis and visual design without abandoning that founding direction. The most significant change, adopted in the 1950s, was to print short fiction alongside the discursive articles and poetry — a step that gradually turned a university review of ideas into a literary magazine in the modern sense. By the later twentieth century its fiction and poetry contributors included internationally known writers such as Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer and Malcolm Lowry, and leading Canadian writers such as Margaret Atwood, Miriam Waddington, Alden Nowlan and Guy Vanderhaeghe. The university's own summary is that the journal developed an international reputation for consistently high-quality work by established and emerging writers in Canada and around the world, and its standing as one of the oldest and most prestigious literary journals in Atlantic Canada rests on that century-long record rather than on any single era.

The journal's institutional support has matched that continuity. Its title pages historically acknowledged support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the journal's current platform page acknowledges the Laing Foundation and Dalhousie University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Like most Canadian literary magazines, it exists inside a mixed economy of subscriptions, university support and foundation and granting support — a structure worth understanding, because it explains both the journal's longevity and the modest scale of the payments it can offer contributors, discussed below.

Aims and Scope: What the Review Publishes

The journal's present invitation, stated on its official submission pages, is concise: The Dalhousie Review invites submissions of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and reviews, from established and emerging writers in Canada and from around the world. Each category carries its own limits, which are set out in the author guidance section below: poetry in groups of up to five poems on any subject and in any style; fiction as a single story of up to 8,000 words; non-fiction as a single essay of up to 4,000 words; and reviews of up to 1,000 words, arranged with the review editor.

Behind those categories sits the older, broader remit visible in its archive. Historical title pages invited contributions in history, literature, political science, philosophy, sociology and the performing and visual arts as well as prose fiction and poetry, and the journal has never entirely closed that door: its non-fiction and essay pages continue the discursive tradition of the Stewart years, now read mainly as literary and cultural essays rather than as disciplinary research articles. A writer assessing fit should therefore think in terms of a literary magazine's taste rather than a discipline's research frontier. The question the editors ask of a poem, story or essay is whether it is accomplished, distinctive writing that will hold a general literary readership — the same readership that has followed the journal for a century — and not whether it advances a specialist scholarly debate with literature reviews and citations. Academic authors who submit should expect their work to be judged as writing first.

Geography deserves a balanced word. The journal is Atlantic Canadian in home, history and identity, and it has always made room for the region's writers and subjects; but its stated welcome is explicitly international, its celebrated contributors have come from many countries, and Dalhousie presents its reputation as international. Writers from outside Canada are not guests at the margin of the journal; they are part of its declared remit, though they should still read recent issues to feel the magazine's tone before submitting.

Editorial Home and Publishing Arrangements

The journal is published by Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and is housed in the university's Department of English, whose journals page lists it among the department's publishing activities and names its current editor as Dr. Anthony Enns, with Stephanie Domet as managing editor. Its issues appear three times a year — the journal platform hosted by Dalhousie University Libraries gives the pattern as Winter, Spring and Autumn, and the department describes the same triannual rhythm — and its digital home is that library-hosted journal platform, which carries the journal's about pages, submission information and issue archive, alongside the department's own journal page at dal.ca. Back issues also live in Dalhousie University's institutional repository collections, which is where researchers will find digitised older numbers, including issues from the journal's quarterly era.

Subscriptions remain print-centred, and the university publishes the rates on its journal page. At the time those pages were checked for this profile, institutional subscriptions within Canada were listed at $45 for one year and $100 for three years, and individual subscriptions at $25 for one year and $60 for three years; outside Canada the institutional rates were $50 for one year and $120 for three years, and individual rates $30 and $75, with orders outside Canada payable in United States dollars, and enquiries directed to the production manager through the journal's Dalhousie email address. Subscription prices for small literary magazines change over time, so readers should treat these figures as the rates published on the official page when checked, and confirm the current rate before ordering rather than relying on any secondary listing, including this one.

Author Guidance: Submitting Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Reviews

The journal's submission instructions, published on its official platform, are unusually specific, and following them exactly is the first test of a submission. All submissions should be saved in a single file in .doc or .docx format and sent to the journal's Dalhousie email address, Dalhousie.Review@dal.ca. The file should include a short cover letter containing contact information — name, mailing address and email address — and a short biographical note. Files should be titled following the journal's stated naming convention: author last name, author first name, title of submission, kind of submission (poetry, nonfiction, fiction or review), and date of submission.

The category limits are firm. Poetry submissions may consist of up to five poems, on any subject and in any style. Fiction submissions may run to 8,000 words and may consist of only one story. Non-fiction submissions may run to 4,000 words and may consist of only one essay. Reviews may run to 1,000 words, but writers should contact the review editor for guidelines before submitting an unsolicited review; publishers may send copies of new titles on the understanding that no review is guaranteed. All submissions should be previously unpublished, and simultaneous submissions are strongly discouraged — a condition writers should respect, since withdrawing work that the journal has spent months reading is a real cost to a small editorial office.

Response times are long by design and by volume, and the journal says so openly: writers should allow up to six months for poetry and up to nine months for fiction and non-fiction. Contributors whose work is accepted receive two complimentary copies of the issue in which their work appears and a monetary payment on the journal's published schedule: $5 per page for poetry and flash fiction, to a maximum of $25; $5 per page for fiction and non-fiction, with a minimum of $25 and a maximum of $50; and $25 for interviews and reviews. The journal adds, with a candour regular contributors will recognise, that it is actively working to increase those payments. Literary magazine economics make such schedules normal in Canada, and writers submit to a journal of this standing chiefly for its readership, its century of reputation and the company their work will keep in its pages. Because reading periods and submission status for literary journals change between issues, writers should always re-check the journal's own submission pages immediately before sending work, and follow the current instructions there over any summary, including this profile.

Indexing, Records and Metrics — and How to Read Them

The title's bibliographic identity is anchored by ISSN 0011-5827, the ISSN stored in this record and the key under which catalogues hold the journal; its Library of Congress Control Number is 24030546 and its OCLC number 213801941, as given in standard catalogue data for the title, and its standard abbreviated title is Dalhous. Rev. An online ISSN could not be verified from the official pages checked for this profile, and none is asserted here; the journal's digital presence through the university library platform does not by itself establish a separate electronic ISSN, and cataloguers should confirm any such identifier in the ISSN Portal before amending a record.

Resolved in the foreground for this profile through the OpenAlex ISSN endpoint for 0011-5827, the journal's OpenAlex record at checking time was source S93584297, hosted by Dalhousie University in Canada, listing 116 works and 30 citations, with summary statistics of an h-index of 3 and an i10-index of 1, a two-year mean citedness of 0.0, and captured coverage from 1968 to 2021. Those figures are reported exactly as the endpoint returned them, attributed to OpenAlex at checking time, and they need the standard interpretation for a literary magazine: OpenAlex counts scholarly citations, and poems, stories and literary essays are rarely cited in the scholarly sense at all, even when they are widely read, taught and anthologised. A low citation count for The Dalhousie Review measures the mismatch between citation databases and creative writing, not the journal's literary standing, which rests on documented ground — a century of continuous publication, its contributor record and its place in Atlantic Canadian letters. An earlier short template text for this record quoted an h-index of 6; that figure differs from the OpenAlex result obtained for this profile, and only the attributed, freshly resolved figure is used here. A DOAJ search by ISSN at checking time returned no record, which is expected in kind for a subscription print literary magazine and is recorded here only as that search result. No impact factor or citation quartile is claimed for this title, because none could be verified from a primary ranking source, and attaching one to a literary magazine of this type would mislead readers about how it should be judged.

Reading and Using the Journal

For readers, the journal offers three issues a year of new poetry, fiction, essays and reviewing from a magazine that has been refining its taste since 1921 — a useful counterweight to the churn of newer literary titles. For researchers, its archive is a primary record of Canadian intellectual and literary life across a century: the early decades document Atlantic Canada's public argument with itself and with the country, and the later decades document the emergence of modern Canadian fiction and poetry in the company of international writers. For writers, it remains what it has long been: a established literary address where a poem or story appears in serious company, is paid for at the modest published rate, and enters a backlist held by university libraries. Each of those uses depends on recognising the journal for what it is — a university literary magazine of unusual longevity — rather than forcing it into the categories of a disciplinary research journal.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ISSN of The Dalhousie Review? 0011-5827. An online ISSN could not be verified from the official pages checked for this profile.

Who publishes The Dalhousie Review? Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, through its Department of English. The editor named on the department's journals page at checking time was Dr. Anthony Enns, with Stephanie Domet as managing editor.

When was it founded and by whom? In 1921, by Herbert L. Stewart, professor of philosophy at Dalhousie, who edited it for twenty-six years, until 1947. It has been in continuous operation since, according to the university.

How often does it appear? Three times a year; the journal platform gives the pattern as Winter, Spring and Autumn.

What can writers submit? Poetry (up to five poems), fiction (one story, up to 8,000 words), non-fiction (one essay, up to 4,000 words) and reviews (up to 1,000 words, after contacting the review editor), sent as a single .doc or .docx file to the journal's Dalhousie email address with a cover letter and biographical note, following the file naming convention on its submission page.

Does it pay contributors? Yes, on a published per-page schedule: $5 per page for poetry and flash fiction to a maximum of $25; $5 per page for fiction and non-fiction, minimum $25 and maximum $50; and $25 for interviews and reviews, plus two complimentary copies of the issue.

Is The Dalhousie Review a peer-reviewed research journal? It is a literary journal with scholarly roots. Its creative and essay content is chosen editorially for a literary readership; it is not a disciplinary research journal, and its very small OpenAlex citation figures (116 works and 30 citations at checking time, source S93584297) reflect how citation databases treat creative writing, not its literary reputation.

How much is a subscription? The official page checked for this profile listed, within Canada, $45 a year institutional and $25 individual, and outside Canada $50 institutional and $30 individual, payable in United States dollars outside Canada. Confirm the current rate with the journal before ordering.