Son of two teachers, Alan Brissenden was educated at Cowra High School, Sydney University (BA Hons, Dip.Ed.) and London University (PhD). He was a teacher and then a research officer for the NSW Department of Education in the 1950s, later teaching at Adelaide University 1963-1994 (Senior Lecturer 1968-1982, Reader 1982-1994). He has continued there as an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Huntingdon Library, Pasadena and Wolfson College, Oxford.
Brissenden grew up in country where some of the incidents fictionalised in Boldrewood's Robbery Under Arms took place, and he has edited and introduced a facsimile edition of this novel, as well as works by Henry Lawson. Author/editor of several books on Shakespeare, he is also well known as a reviewer and as a dance critic. He has been involved in a number of Australian and international organisations concerned with literature and the arts, including the Adelaide Festival of Arts, the Adelaide branch of the English Association, the Arts Council of South Australia, the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association, Friends of the State Library of South Australia and the Australian Dance Council. He has chaired the Early Imprints Project in SA since 1977, and edited Early Printed Books in South Australia: The Catalogue of the Early Imprints Project in South Australia (electronic resource, 1994) which was transferred to the National Bibliographic Database. He was awarded an AM in 1996 for service to the arts as a promoter and critic of drama and dance, and as a member of the Board of Governors of the Adelaide Festival.
Brother of R. F. Brissenden (qv).