Jamaican by birth and education, Nora worked with dyslexics and in adult literacy before 1979, when she joined CCAT, the previous incarnation of Anglia Ruskin.
Nora has lectured on virtually all periods, from medieval to modernism to Caribbean literature, but now specializes in the Romantic era.
Her chief publications include the co-authored Shelley's Venomed Melody (Cambridge University Press 1986), a monograph on Shelley and medicine, which was followed by Kipling's Myths of Love and Death (Macmillan, 1990) and numerous journal articles and chapters. Her international reputation was established by her textual work on the Shelleys between 1991-2002. Editions of two of P.B. Shelley's notebooks in the Bodleian Library alternated with her general editorship of twelve volumes of Mary Shelley's works, which included her own editions of Frankenstein and Valperga. Currently she is co-general editor of the multi-volume Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Johns Hopkins, 2000 onward), with special responsibility for poems edited by Mary Shelley after P. B. Shelley's death.
She has lectured as an invited speaker in the UK, US, France, Italy and Japan, having recently returned from a semester (2005-2006) as Visiting Professor, Ferris Women's University, Yokohama and is on the editorial board of several international journals. She is also an occasional reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement. Samples of her work and reviews are available on the internet.