What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1925 Oxford professorship specifically called?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1925 Oxford professorship was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon.

Tolkien took up the chair at the University of Oxford in 1925, after teaching at the University of Leeds. The post focused on Old English language and literature, an area in which Tolkien was a leading scholar. His research and teaching included subjects connected with works such as Beowulf and Middle English texts.

In 1945, Tolkien left the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair to become the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature. That later title is often supplied incorrectly when biographies mention his Oxford career without distinguishing the two appointments.

The professorship mattered to Tolkien’s creative work because his fiction grew from deep engagement with languages, philology, and medieval literature. His academic expertise did not merely provide background research; it shaped the sound, history, and structure of Middle-earth’s languages and stories.