What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published academic work on Middle English?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published academic work on Middle English was A Middle English Vocabulary.

Tolkien published A Middle English Vocabulary in 1922. He prepared it in connection with Kenneth Sisam’s Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose, a collection used by students of Middle English. The vocabulary demonstrates Tolkien’s early professional work as a philologist, before the publication of The Hobbit.

The title can be confused with Tolkien’s better-known scholarly essays and books. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” was a celebrated lecture first delivered in 1936, while Finn and Hengest was published much later, in 1982. Tolkien’s academic career included work on Old English, Middle English, Welsh, and other languages. His philological research was not separate from his fiction: the study of words, sound changes, and medieval texts supplied methods and inspiration for his invented histories.