In the second volume of the history of Dalhousie University, P.B. Waite traces Dalhousie's development from a small privately funded college of about 700 students and four faculties to a large Canadian university of 9,000 students that includes many of the leading professional schools in Atlantic Canada.In an engaging, often elegant style, this first volume of a two-volume narrative history of Dalhousie University chronicles the years from the founding of the university in 1818 by the ninth Earl of Dalhousie to the movement for university federation in 1921-25.

The lives of professors and students, deans and presidents, their ideas and idiosyncrasies, their triumphs and failures, provide the driving force of Waite's narrative. Avoiding the details of financing, curriculum, and administration that sometimes dominate institutional histories, Waite focuses on the men and women who were the blood of the university and who established its traditions and ethos.

Halifax in peace and war is basic to Dalhousie's history, as is its relations with other colleges and universities in Nova Scotia. Waite sets all this out, placing Dalhousie's development within the larger Nova Scotian context.