What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic field in his 1925 Oxford appointment?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic field in his 1925 Oxford appointment was Anglo-Saxon.

In 1925 Tolkien became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford. The title refers to the Old English language and literature of early medieval England. He held the chair until 1945, when he moved to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature.

Tolkien was trained as a philologist, studying how languages develop and how texts preserve earlier forms of speech and culture. His professional work on Old English, Middle English, and related languages strongly influenced his fiction, including names, poetic styles, riddles, and invented languages.

His academic career is sometimes reduced to the claim that he was simply an Oxford literature professor. More precisely, his first Oxford chair specialized in Anglo-Saxon. He also taught at Leeds before returning to Oxford, and his 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” helped reshape modern discussion of that poem.