He was born in London, and educated at Bembridge School and Queen's College, Oxford. He coedited Eight Oxford Poets in 1941, with Sidney Keyes and Michael Meyer, and helped edit Oxford Poetry in 1942-43. He lived for a time in the 1950s at Zennor in Cornwall.

He was a representative figure of British poetry in the early 1950s, and edited the poetry anthology Images of Tomorrow (1953).

He was awarded an OBE and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

A documentary film Ibycus: A Poem by John Heath-Stubbs was made by the Chilean director Carlos Klein in 1997.

Although afflicted by blindness from the 1960s, and completely without sight from 1978, he continued to write almost to the end.

His diction was strong, yet subtle. Running through his work, like that of most romantic poets, was a nostalgia for 'classicism'. He was consciously literary, and his work was elaborately wrought rather than spontaneous, so it was not the kind of poetry likely to have mass appeal. However, his devotion to the craft of poetry makes his work impressive. Few writers of his time had a deeper knowledge of the English language, or cared for it more devotedly.

Dannie Abse — Drummond Allison — Eurasia Anderson - William Bell — Thomas Blackburn — Maurice Carpenter - Alex Comfort — Yorke Crompton — N. K. Cruikshank — Keith Douglas — George Every — John Fairfax — G. S. Fraser — John Gibbs — W. S. Graham - F. Pratt Green — J. C. Hall — Michael Hamburger — John Heath-Stubbs — Glyn Jones — Sidney Keyes — Francis King — James Kirkup — Norman Nicholson — I. R. Orton — Michael Paffard — Kathleen Raine — Anne Ridler — Walter Roberts — W. R. Rodgers — Joseph Rykwert — John Smith — Muriel Spark — Derek Stanford — J. Ormond Thomas — W. Price Turner — John Wain — John Waller — Vernon Watkins — Gordon Wharton - Margaret Willy — David Wright

Edited by Heath-Stubbs and David Wright: Poets included were:

William Harrison Ainsworth - Matthew Arnold - Richard Harris Barham - William Barnes - Thomas Lovell Beddoes - Bramwell Brontë - Charlotte Brontë - Emily Brontë - Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Robert Browning - Thomas Edward Brown - Lord Byron - Lewis Carroll - John Clare - Ernée Clark - Arthur Hugh Clough - Hartley Coleridge - William Johnson Cory - George Darley - John Davidson - Lord de Tabley - Aubrey de Vere - Benjamin Disraeli - Richard Watson Dixon - Sydney Dobell - Digby Mackworth Dolben - Ernest Dowson - Aglen Dowty - Ebenezer Elliot - Sebastian Evans - Frederick William Faber - Jack Fireblood - John Christopher Fitzachary - Edward Fitzgerald - William Schwenk Gilbert - David Gray - Benjamin Hardacre - Robert Stephen Hawker - Reginald Heber - William Ernest Henley - Thomas Hood - Gerard Manley Hopkins - Richard Hengist Horne - G. W. Hunt - James Hurnard - Ebenezer Jones - Edward Lear - Eugene Lee-Hamilton - Arthur Lloyd - Frederick Locker-Lampson - E. Lysaght - George MacDonald - William MacGillivray - Francis Mahony - James Clarence Mangan - Richard Mant - George Meredith - William Morris - John Henry Newman - Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy - Samuel Palmer - Coventry Patmore - Winthrop Mackworth Praed - Thomas Pringle - William Caldwell Roscoe - Christina Rossetti - Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Joseph Skipsey - John Sterling - Algernon Charles Swinburne - John Addington Symonds - Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Frederick Tennyson - Charles Tennyson-Turner - James Thomson - Oscar Wilde - Christopher Wordsworth