What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s university subject at Oxford before becoming a professor?

J.R.R. Tolkien studied English language and literature at Oxford before becoming a professor.

He initially entered Exeter College, Oxford, in 1911 to study Classics, but changed his course to English language and literature. His academic interests increasingly focused on historical languages, medieval texts, and philology. He graduated in 1915 with first-class honours.

Tolkien’s university subject is sometimes reduced to “English,” but his education involved both literature and the historical study of language. That combination strongly shaped his fiction: invented languages, ancient legends, word histories, and medieval narrative forms are central to his work. After military service in the First World War, he worked on the Oxford English Dictionary and held academic posts before becoming Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and later Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.