A leading intellectual, writer, anthologist, and critic,[4] The Guardian (in a tribute titled "My Hero")[5] and The Spectator were among several publications to describe Gross as "the best-read man in Britain".

[12] After gaining first-class honours in English Literature at Oxford he won a fellowship at Princeton, where he undertook postgraduate studies.

He then returned to England and taught at Queen Mary, University of London and at King's College, Cambridge, of which he was a fellow from 1962 to 1965.

His works as author include The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (1969; revised 1991, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize), James Joyce (1970), Shylock: Four Hundred Years in the Life of a Legend (1993), and his childhood memoir A Double Thread (2001).

[13][14] "The publication of John Gross's The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters, when I was a bookish teenager, undoubtedly determined for me the direction I wanted my life to take...

John Updike called The New Oxford Book of English Prose "a marvelous gem… I wonder if there has ever been an anthology quite like it – with so vast a field – the virtually infinite expanse of English-language prose – for the anthologist to roam… I have been rapturously rolling around in John Gross’s amazing book for days."

"[16] Gross wrote regularly on literary and cultural topics for The New York Review of Books,[17] The Times Literary Supplement, The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion,[18] Commentary,[19] The Spectator, Standpoint,[20] The Observer, The New Statesman and The New York Times.