At which Oxford college did J.R.R. Tolkien first serve as a professor?

J.R.R. Tolkien first served as a professor at Pembroke College, Oxford.

In 1925 he became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, a post associated with Pembroke College. He remained there until 1945, teaching and researching Old English language and literature while developing much of the mythology that later became Middle-earth.

During his Pembroke years, Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and began The Lord of the Rings. His academic expertise shaped his fiction through invented languages, heroic traditions, poetic forms, and echoes of Germanic and Northern European literature.

In 1945 Tolkien moved to Merton College after becoming Merton Professor of English Language and Literature. Because Merton was his later and longer Oxford affiliation, it is sometimes incorrectly given as the college where he first held a professorship.