What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s first academic position at the University of Oxford?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s first academic position at the University of Oxford was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon.

He was appointed to the chair in 1925, when he was 33 years old, and held it until 1945. The position was based at Pembroke College, Oxford. Tolkien’s academic work focused on Old English language and literature, and his teaching and research included subjects such as Beowulf, philology, and the history of English words.

In 1945, Tolkien moved to Oxford’s Merton College and became the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, a post he held until his retirement in 1959. His professional study of languages and medieval texts strongly informed his creative writing, but his fiction was not simply a transcription of one medieval source. The famous 1936 lecture later published as “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” helped change modern critical approaches to the poem.