What was the name of the university where J.R.R. Tolkien studied English?

J.R.R. Tolkien studied English at the University of Oxford. He attended Exeter College, first studying classics before changing to the English language and literature course. His Oxford education deepened the philological and medieval interests that shaped his later writing.

Tolkien’s academic work focused heavily on languages and old texts. He became a professor at Oxford, teaching at both the University of Leeds earlier in his career and Oxford later. His 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” was influential in changing how scholars approached the Old English poem.

The university is sometimes confused with a particular college. Exeter College is the Oxford college Tolkien attended, but the broader institution was the University of Oxford. Tolkien also held Oxford’s Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon and later the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, making Oxford central to both his professional and creative life.