At which university did J.R.R. Tolkien teach as a professor of Anglo-Saxon?

J.R.R. Tolkien taught Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford. He held the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 to 1945.

After that appointment, Tolkien became the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, serving from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. His academic work focused on languages, medieval texts, and the history of English.

Oxford was not merely Tolkien’s workplace. He lived and wrote in Oxford for much of his adult life, and the city’s colleges, libraries, and scholarly communities formed the setting for his professional career. He also belonged to literary discussion groups, including the Inklings.

Readers sometimes remember Tolkien primarily as a novelist, but his academic expertise was central to his fiction. His knowledge of Old English, Old Norse, Welsh, Finnish, and other languages influenced the names, sounds, and histories of Middle-earth.