What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s Oxford professorship before he became Merton Professor?

Before becoming Merton Professor, J.R.R. Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.

Tolkien held the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship from 1925 until 1945. The position focused on Old English language and literature, fields central to his academic career. His teaching and research included works such as Beowulf, whose language and poetic traditions influenced his understanding of heroic storytelling.

In 1945, Tolkien moved to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, which he held until his retirement in 1959. His academic work and his fiction developed together: philology gave him methods for tracing how words and stories change across time, while invented languages allowed him to build histories for imagined peoples.

The title is sometimes shortened inaccurately to “Professor of Anglo-Saxon.” The full name matters because the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair was a specific Oxford professorship with a long institutional history.