Everett Franklin Bleiler was born in Boston, Massachusetts on April 30, 1920. He graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in anthropology in 1942 and received an M.A. in the History of Culture from the University of Chicago in 1950. In addition, Bleiler was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1951-1952.

He served in the United States Army from 1942-1946, doing mostly clerical work in military intelligence, and he also attended the Japanese Language School in Ann Arbor, MI. He attained the rank of Sergeant.

After leaving the military, Bleiler embarked on what would become a long and productive career as an editor, bibliographer, and scholar in the fields of science fiction and fantasy literature and of detective fiction. He did editorial work for Shasta Publishers in Chicago from 1947-1950 while attending the University of Chicago, such work including manuscript selection and rewriting. He worked as a freelance writer from 1952-1955 and was then hired in 1955 by Dover Publications, a noted New York City publishing company known mainly for publishing reissued works.

This event marked the start of a career of more than 20 years with Dover, during which Bleiler worked as advertising manager from 1955-1960; managing director from 1960-1965; and finally, executive vice-president from 1965-1978. After leaving Dover, Bleiler served as an editorial consultant for Charles Scribners Sons from 1978-1987.

In the course of his career, Bleiler was responsible for a large and significant number of works. He cooperated with T.E. Dikty on editing the anthology series The Best Science Fiction Stories between 1949-1954, which was the first published anthology to present the best science fiction stories for a given year. The two also edited Year's Best Science Fiction Novels between 1952-1954. Between 1952-1981, Bleiler edited a number of other detective and supernatural fiction anthologies, including Three Gothic Novels (1966), Five Victorian Ghost Novels (1971), Eight Dime Novels (1974), Three Supernatural Novels of the Victorian Period (1975), Three Victorian Detective Novels(1978), A Treasury of Victorian Detective Stories (1979), and A Treasury of Victorian Ghost Stories (1981). He also edited many anthologies of works between 1960-1980 by individual authors, including H.G. Wells, Ambrose Bierce, E.T.A. Hoffmann, M.R. James, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Most of these works were marked by what Mike Ashley called "detailed and exemplary introductions" by Bleiler as well.

Bleiler's most important contributions to scholarship of the literature of the fantastic include his editorship and production of a corpus of reference works that include The Checklist of Fantastic Literature: A Bibliography of Fantasy, Weird and Science Fiction Books Published in the English Language (1948, revised in 1978 as The Checklist of Science-Fiction and Supernatural Fiction); Science Fiction Writers (1982); The Guide to Supernatural Fiction (1983); Supernatural Fiction Writers (1985); Science-Fiction: The Early Years (1990); and Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years (1998).

In addition to his many nonfiction works, which also include numerous articles, reviews, introductions and translations (most notably a scholarly translation of Nostradamus in 1979),  Bleiler also wrote two works of fiction, written in the 1970s but not published until 2006 by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box Press (BSBD), an independent Canadian publishing company. The works include  Firegang: A Mythic Fantasy, and Magistrate Mai and the Invisible Murderer.

Everett Bleiler received several important awards and accolades over the course of his career, including the Pilgrim Award, presented by the Science Fiction Research Association in 1984 for lifetime achievement in the field of science fiction scholarship. He also received a World Fantasy Award (Special Award, Professional) in 1978, the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1988, the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award in 1994, and the International Horror Guild Living Legend Award in 2004. He was also nominated for 5 Locus Poll Awards, and 2 Hugo Awards.

Bleiler married Ellan Haas in 1956, and the two had four children: Richard (himself a science fiction historian, with whom Bleiler collaborated on several works), John, Constance, and Dorothy. He died on June 13, 2010, in Interlaken, New York.