What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic field at Oxford before he became famous as a fantasy author?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic field at Oxford was English language and literature.

Tolkien became a scholar of language, philology, and medieval texts. He held academic posts at the University of Leeds and the University of Oxford, where he taught subjects connected with the history and structure of English.

At Oxford, he served as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 to 1945, then as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 until 1959. His academic expertise strongly influenced his fiction, especially its languages, names, poems, and invented histories.

Tolkien’s creative work was not separate from his scholarship. He famously described himself as a “philologist,” and his knowledge of Old English, Old Norse, Welsh, and other languages helped shape Middle-earth.