Barbara was professor of English literature at Birkbeck from 1970 to 1989, specialising in nineteenth century literature. In 1962, Hardy was awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize by the British Academy for her monograph The Novels of George Eliot.

In 1988 she delivered the British Academy’s Sarah Tryphena Phillips Lecture in American Literature and History. In 1997, she was awarded the Sagittarius Prize by the Society of Authors for her novel London Lovers.

Barbara was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1997, and a Senior Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2006.