J.R.R. Tolkien served as a professor for much of his academic career in Oxford.
Tolkien held teaching and research posts at the University of Oxford, where he became an important scholar of English language and medieval literature. He was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 until 1959.
Oxford’s libraries, colleges, languages, and medieval scholarly culture influenced Tolkien’s professional life and intersected with his creative work. He was also part of literary friendship networks, including the Inklings, a group that met at Oxford and included C. S. Lewis.
Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and studied at Oxford before beginning his academic career. Cambridge is another major English university city, but it was not the main institutional home of Tolkien’s professorship. His Oxford career combined philology, the historical study of languages, with teaching and literary creation.