Which university chair did J.R.R. Tolkien hold from 1925 to 1945?

J.R.R. Tolkien held the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford from 1925 to 1945.

The chair placed Tolkien at the center of Oxford’s study of Old English and related Germanic languages. His scholarship included major work on Beowulf, and his 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” helped redirect academic attention toward the poem’s artistry and imaginative structure rather than treating it only as historical evidence.

Tolkien’s academic work and fiction were closely connected, though they were not the same kind of writing. His knowledge of language change, mythology, heroic poetry, and medieval literature informed his invented cultures and stories.

In 1945, Tolkien moved to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, which he held until his retirement in 1959. He therefore occupied two major Oxford professorships during his career.