Which university awarded C.S. Lewis the first professorship of medieval and Renaissance English?

The University of Cambridge awarded C.S. Lewis the first professorship of medieval and Renaissance English.

In 1954, Lewis left Oxford for Cambridge after being appointed the first holder of the English professorship focused on the medieval and Renaissance periods. He became a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and continued his academic work alongside his writing and public religious communication.

The appointment did not mean that Lewis abandoned Oxford entirely. Oxford had been his academic home since the 1920s, and he remained closely associated with the city, its libraries, and the Inklings. The move reflected a new institutional opportunity rather than a complete break with his earlier career.

Lewis’s Cambridge years were also marked by his marriage to Joy Davidman and by her illness and death. He continued to publish fiction, criticism, and Christian writing until his death in 1963. The Cambridge professorship is sometimes confused with his long Oxford fellowship at Magdalen College, but the two positions belonged to different universities.