Which university awarded J.R.R. Tolkien a professorship in Anglo-Saxon in 1925?

The University of Oxford awarded J.R.R. Tolkien a professorship in Anglo-Saxon in 1925.

Tolkien became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in 1925. The position placed him at the centre of academic study of Old English language and literature, subjects that deeply influenced his creative work.

He later held the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature at Oxford from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. His academic publications included major work on Beowulf, the Old English epic that he taught and studied throughout his career.

Tolkien’s Oxford career is sometimes reduced to the idea that he was simply a fantasy author. In fact, his scholarly expertise in philology, medieval texts, and historical languages was central to the construction of Middle-earth. His invented languages developed alongside detailed histories and literary traditions.