Hope Hewitt was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of English in 1958 at the Canberra University College. She had held temporary teaching positions in 1948 and 1956-57. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University in 1965 (the College having amalgamated with the Australian National University in 1960). She specialised in teaching Elizabethan and Jacobean drama and the 18th and 19th-century English novel but also lectured on more recent works. She was also a book reviewer and theatre critic for the Canberra Times. She retired in 1981.