What Oxford academic chair did J.R.R. Tolkien take in 1925?

In 1925, J.R.R. Tolkien became the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.

The chair was based at Oxford University and focused on Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon. Tolkien held it from 1925 until 1945. His scholarship in Old English, Germanic languages, and medieval literature shaped both his teaching and his creative work.

Tolkien later moved to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, which he held from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Because both positions were at Oxford, they are sometimes blended together in summaries of his career.

His academic work included influential studies of Beowulf and medieval literature. The famous lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” delivered in 1936, helped change how the poem was understood by modern scholars.