At which university did J.R.R. Tolkien teach as a professor of English language and literature?

J.R.R. Tolkien taught as a professor of English language and literature at the University of Oxford. Oxford was the central academic setting of his career and the place where he developed much of his reputation as a scholar of language and medieval literature.

He held several Oxford posts, including the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 to 1945 and the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature from 1945 until 1959. He continued living and writing in the Oxford area for much of his life.

Tolkien’s Oxford work included teaching Old and Middle English, studying philology, and researching texts such as Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. His friendship with C.S. Lewis also developed in Oxford, where both belonged to the literary discussion group known as the Inklings. The university therefore shaped both Tolkien’s professional scholarship and his creative community.