 During the Second World War, she was an assistant lecturer (1940–1945) at the University of Cambridge, then University Lecturer in Italian Literature and Language from 1945 to 1962.She was Warden of Willoughby Hall, University of Nottingham, from 1963 to 1969 and Reader in Italian Studies at Nottingham from 1966 to 1978.Alongside her teaching work, she was chief executive and General Editor of the Cambridge Italian Dictionary from 1948 to 1981 and managing editor of "Seven", an Anglo-American literary review, from 1980 to 2004.