After a year in the Education Department at the University of Hull, Cawley returned to UCL in 1935 for three years as a part-time Lecturer during which time he completed his MA on John of Trevisa's version of Ralph Higden's Polychronicon.

[2] In 1938, Cawley went to Harvard on a Commonwealth Fellowship and, on his return to England, joined the British Council.

He went as Professor of English to Iași in Romania until the German invasion forced him to leave and he spent 1941 to 1945 in Egypt and in Benghazi, Libya.

[3] In 1959 Cawley left Leeds to go to the Darnell Chair of English at the University of Queensland, Australia.

[8][9] Cawley married fellow University College London postgraduate student Winifred Cozens (1915 - 2001) in 1939.