What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published academic book?

A Middle English Vocabulary was J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published academic book. He wrote it with Kenneth Sisam, and it was published in 1922 as a glossary supporting the study of the Middle English poem The Ancrene Wisse.

The work reflects Tolkien’s professional training as a philologist, a scholar who studies language through historical evidence. At this stage of his career, he was teaching at the University of Leeds and researching the development of English vocabulary and literature.

Tolkien’s later academic reputation grew through essays and lectures on Old English and medieval texts. His 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” became especially influential, but it was not his first academic book. Finn and Hengest was published much later, in 1982, after Tolkien’s death.

The Book of Lost Tales is also not the answer: it is an early collection of Tolkien’s mythological writings, later edited and published posthumously as part of The History of Middle-earth. A Middle English Vocabulary belongs to Tolkien’s early scholarly career and predates his major fiction publications.