Bernard Bergonzi read English as a mature student at Wadham College, Oxford, having previously worked in clerical jobs. He has been assistant lecturer, then lecturer, at the University of Manchester, and senior lecturer and then Professor of English at the University of Warwick. He has been Emeritus Professor of English there since 1992, and has held visiting professorships at Brandeis, Stanford, and Louisville.
Since 1961 he has published many books of criticism and biography, and edited several more. His most recent titles include Exploding English: Criticism, Theory, Culture (OUP, 1990), Wartime and Aftermath: English Literature and its Background 1939-1960 (OUP, 1993), War Poets and Other Subjects (Ashgate, 2000), and A Victorian Wanderer: The Life of Thomas Arnold the Younger (OUP, 2003), of which A. N. Wilson wrote in the Spectator, 'Professor Bergonzi has painted a perfect Victorian miniature'.