J.R.R. Tolkien held the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.
Tolkien became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford in 1925, serving until 1945. The position was based at Pembroke College and focused on the language and literature now commonly called Old English.
He later became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, a chair he held from 1945 until 1959. Tolkien’s academic work included the influential lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” delivered in 1936. His professional study of historical languages and medieval texts informed, but did not simply reproduce, the languages and legends of Middle-earth.