She taught in a number of Indian colleges in Patna, Pune and Delhi before joining the University of Hyderabad. Her last and longest spell was as professor of English in the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

She was a visiting professor in several universities outside India including the University of Texas at Austin, University of Chicago, University of California at Berkeley, Macquarie Univesity (Sydney), University of Canberra and Flinders University (Adelaide).

She authored 'The Twice Born Fiction', 'Realism and Reality: Novel and Society in India', 'Re-reading Jane Austen' and 'The Perishable Empire'. She also edited about half a dozen collections of essays including 'Considerations: Twelve Studies of Indian Literature in English', 'Midnight's Children: A Book of Readings', and 'Early Novels in India'.

She was also the founder-editor of a journal Vagartha that published Indian literature in English translation from 1973 to 1979.