He graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1936 and received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 with a dissertation on the 18th-century poet Richard Owen Cambridge.
Despite infirmities that made writing difficult in his last years, he persisted in reviewing books for such papers as the Times Literary Supplement, maintaining correspondence, and assisted other scholars with their work.
One of Altick's most enduringly popular books was written during his first years at Ohio State: The Scholar Adventurers (1950), a title he coined to describe the literary detectives whose work was resulting in new discoveries about James Boswell, Christopher Marlowe, and other major figures in English literature.
It brought together information about what sorts of books, magazines, newspapers, and ephemera ordinary Britons were reading during the first age of industrialized publishing, and presented it in a clear and thoughtful way.
In retirement, Altick continued to indulge what he called his "incurable itch to set pen to paper" with personal reminiscences as well as major books on the literary uses of paintings, the journalistic contexts of Victorian novels, the Victorian origins of "sensational" crime stories, and the first ten years of Punch, the British magazine.