Which Oxford college employed J.R.R. Tolkien as Merton Professor from 1945?

Merton College employed J.R.R. Tolkien as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945.

Tolkien had previously been Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College. In 1945 he moved to Merton College, where he continued teaching and researching language and medieval literature. He remained associated with Merton until his retirement in 1959.

The college connection matters because Tolkien’s academic career was not separate from his fiction. His study of Old and Middle English, Germanic languages, mythology, and medieval poetry supplied many of the linguistic and literary techniques used in his invented histories.

Readers often remember Pembroke because Tolkien wrote much of The Hobbit and the early parts of The Lord of the Rings while working there. His later Oxford professorship, however, belonged to Merton, making the two colleges important but distinct parts of his career.