Which university employed J.R.R. Tolkien as a professor for most of his academic career?

The University of Oxford employed J.R.R. Tolkien for most of his academic career. He held teaching and professorial positions there from the 1920s until his retirement in 1959.

Tolkien became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in 1925. In 1945 he moved to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, a position he held until 1959. His scholarship focused on language, medieval texts, and literary history.

Oxford was also central to Tolkien’s personal and creative life. He was a fellow of Pembroke College and later Merton College. His work with fellow writers, including C.S. Lewis, formed the literary discussion group known as the Inklings.

Tolkien studied at Oxford before becoming a member of its academic staff. Cambridge is another major British university with strong medieval-literature traditions, but it was not the institution that employed Tolkien during his principal academic career.