Which Oxford college employed J.R.R. Tolkien as a fellow and tutor in English beginning in 1925?

Pembroke College employed J.R.R. Tolkien as a fellow and tutor in English beginning in 1925.

Tolkien moved from the University of Leeds to Oxford in 1925 after receiving the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon. At Oxford, he became a fellow and tutor of Pembroke College. He remained associated with Pembroke until 1945, when he moved to Merton College after taking the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature.

His Pembroke years included some of the most important stages in the development of his fiction. He wrote The Hobbit during this period, and the book was published in 1937. He also began and developed much of the material that would eventually become The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien’s later Oxford position at Merton can create confusion when identifying his college. Merton was his final Oxford college, but Pembroke was the college connected with his early Oxford professorship and the publication of The Hobbit. Both colleges are therefore important to different phases of his academic career.