Gabriel Turville-Petre entered the world at Bosworth Hall in Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire on the 25th of March 1908. He was the youngest of five children born to Lieutenant-Colonel Oswald Henry Philip Turville-Petre and Margaret Lucy Cave.
Turville-Petre served as Honorary Lecturer in Modern Icelandic at the University of Leeds from 1935 to 1950 and worked as Lektor in English at the University of Iceland from 1936 to 1938. He was appointed the first Vigfússon Reader in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at University of Oxford in 1941 and retired as Professor Emeritus in 1975.
Critics noted that Origins of Icelandic Literature made his major contribution to our understanding of early Icelandic civilization and has proved the most influential of all his writings. The book provides a detailed account of the settlement and early history of Iceland while arguing that the Icelanders produced the richest literature of medieval Europe.
During World War II, Turville-Petre spent much time serving as a cryptoanalyst at Bletchley Park and in the Foreign Office. He could not take up his position as the first Vigfússon Reader at Oxford until 1946 due to these wartime duties.
Turville-Petre died of cancer in Oxford on the 17th of February 1978. He bequeathed his personal library to the English Faculty Library of Oxford University where the collection is now known as the Icelandic Collections.