At which Oxford college did J.R.R. Tolkien teach Anglo-Saxon from 1925 to 1945?

J.R.R. Tolkien taught Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945.

In 1925 Tolkien became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. His teaching and research focused on Old English language and literature, including works such as Beowulf. Pembroke College was the Oxford college associated with this first professorship.

Tolkien’s academic career is sometimes simplified because he later held a different Oxford chair. In 1945 he moved to Merton College and became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, a position he kept until his retirement in 1959. Thus Pembroke belongs to his Anglo-Saxon professorship, while Merton belongs to his later chair.

His scholarly work and his fiction were closely connected. Tolkien’s expertise in old languages, myths, and heroic poetry shaped the names, sounds, and storytelling traditions of Middle-earth. His famous 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” helped change how the poem was studied.