Which Oxford college did J.R.R. Tolkien serve as a professor of Anglo-Saxon?

J.R.R. Tolkien served as a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford. He held the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 until 1945.

During his Pembroke years, Tolkien taught and researched Old English language and literature while developing many of the stories that later became central to Middle-earth. The Hobbit was published in 1937, and he began writing The Lord of the Rings during this period. His academic work and creative writing were closely connected through his interest in language, mythology, and ancient texts.

Tolkien later became the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford, serving from 1945 to 1959. That later appointment is the source of a common mix-up. Pembroke was the Oxford college associated with his professorship of Anglo-Saxon; Merton was his later academic home.