Fredson Thayer Bowers was born in New Haven, Connecticut on April 25, 1905. Although he was the only child of Fredson Eugene Bowers and Hattie May Quigley, he grew up with two half-sisters (the children of his mother's previous marriage) and a stepfather, Charles K. Groesbeck, who his mother married after his father's death in 1911.

Bowers entered Brown University at age 16 after graduating from New Haven General High School in 1921. His study interests were in English literature and music, both of which he pursued with vigor. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and participated in a variety of literary, music and student activity clubs. He edited the school newspaper and served on the boards of student publications. He played the Hawaiian guitar, the saxophone and led a jazz band. On November 11, 1924, at age 19, while still an undergraduate, he married Hyacinth Adeline Sutphin, a Smith College graduate and member of a New York Social Register family.

Bowers graduated from Brown in 1925 and spent the next nine years at Harvard doing graduate study and raising a family. A son, Fredson, was born in 1927, a daughter, Joan, in 1931, and twin sons, Peter and Stephen, in 1934. Bowers taught English, tutored in modern languages and developed a passion for breeding, showing, judging and writing about Irish wolfhounds. He earned his Ph.D in February, 1934 and the next year went to England on scholarship.

In 1936, following an episode of marital problems that had led to a divorce, Bowers took an instructorship at Princeton. He taught freshman English and did editing work on Thomas Dekker until he accepted an offer from Dean James Southall Wilson to serve as acting assistant professor at the University of Virginia, which remained his home for the rest of his life. At the University of Virginia, Bowers taught English along with 17th and 18th century novels and a course in introductory bibliography. In 1942, he married Nancy Hale, and relocated with her to wartime Washington, D.C. where he served as a Naval Commander supervising the deciphering of enemy codes.

Bowers' impressive scholarship during his early years in Charlottesville resulted in his recognition as a preeminent authority of bibliographical analysis. His ideas and methods broke new ground and challenged established principles and methods in descriptive bibliography and textual criticism. In this period, he inaugurated the publication of which he personally edited for more than 40 years and developed into a journal of worldwide repute. In 1949, he published , which became and remains a major resource in the history of bibliography. His prestigious lectures and the voluminous output of his published essays and research together with his activities on and leadership of professional associations marked him as a dynamic scholar in his field. As a teacher of boundless energy and as an active and innovative chairman and dean, Bowers built the English department at the University of Virginia into one of the best in the United States. Bowers still found time to teach summer courses at the University of Chicago and to pursue his hobbies: writing music reviews each week for the and publishing articles about his beloved wolfhounds and his philatelic interests.

During his later career years, Bowers turned his scholarship skills in textual criticism to editing the works of post-medieval writers. He published dozens of edited volumes (60 between 1960 and his death) creating distinct expressions of technique and methodology that became recognized among many as the "Bowers school of editing." He continued producing large numbers of essays, lectures and reviews beyond his retirement in 1975.

Throughout his notable career, Bowers was the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions. Among the many were honorary degrees from Clark and Brown Universities and the University of Chicago. He received the Gold Medal of the Bibliographical Society in London and his own University of Virginia recognized his many achievements with its highest honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award as well as two endowed chairs, the Alumni Professorship of English (1957-68) and the Linden Kent Memorial Professorship (1968-75, 1975-91 (Emeritus)). Bowers also held appointments to the Fulbright, Guggenheim, Rosenbach, Woodrow Wilson National and the Academy of Arts and Sciences fellowships. In 1974, Bowers was honored by his former Virginia and Chicago students at a retirement dinner and in 1985, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, his colleagues organized an international conference on bibliography and editing in his name at the University of Virginia.

Nancy Hale, whose health had been failing for several years, died in 1988 and Bowers, who had also begun suffering with major health problems, died a few years later on April 11, 1991, at age 86. Following cremation, his ashes were buried next to the grave of Nancy Hale at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Boston.