Which Oxford academic post did J.R.R. Tolkien hold from 1925 to 1945?

J.R.R. Tolkien held the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 to 1945. The post placed him at the center of academic study of Old English language and literature.

Before Oxford, Tolkien taught at the University of Leeds, where he became a professor of English language. At Oxford, his work as a philologist involved Germanic languages, medieval texts, and the history of English. His scholarly interests strongly influenced the languages and names he created for Middle-earth.

In 1945, Tolkien moved to another Oxford chair: the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature. He held that position until his retirement in 1959. The two professorships are therefore easy to mix up.

Tolkien’s academic career was not separate from his fiction. He famously described his invented languages as a central part of his creative work, while his knowledge of Old English, Old Norse, Welsh, and Finnish helped give his imagined cultures distinctive linguistic histories.