What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s first academic teaching post after leaving Oxford in 1920?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s first academic teaching post after leaving Oxford in 1920 was at the University of Leeds.

He joined Leeds as a reader in English language in 1920 and became a professor there in 1924. His work included teaching historical linguistics and medieval English literature. He also collaborated with E.V. Gordon on the influential edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, published in 1925.

Tolkien returned to Oxford in 1925 to take the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon. That move began the Oxford phase of his career for which he is best known.

Leeds is sometimes overlooked because Tolkien is so strongly associated with Oxford. The Leeds years were important, however: they gave him extensive teaching experience and developed the scholarly interests that later appeared in his fiction, including heroic poetry, word history, and the imaginative power of older languages.