J.R.R. Tolkien began his Oxford professorship in 1925. That year he was appointed Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, a position he held until 1945.
The appointment followed Tolkien’s earlier academic work at the University of Leeds, where he had been a professor of English language. At Oxford, his teaching and research centered on Old English, the language and literature of Anglo-Saxon England, as well as related philological subjects.
This date is sometimes confused with Tolkien’s later Oxford appointment. In 1945 he became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, a different chair that he held until his retirement in 1959.
Tolkien’s Oxford career was important not only because of his university status but also because it placed him among scholars and writers who influenced his intellectual life. His famous 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” was delivered during the period of his first Oxford professorship.