Which university employed J.R.R. Tolkien as a professor from 1945 until his retirement in 1959?

The University of Oxford employed J.R.R. Tolkien as a professor from 1945 until his retirement in 1959.

Tolkien became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford in 1945. He had already taught at Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, a post he held from 1925 to 1945.

Oxford was central to Tolkien’s academic and personal life. He taught, researched, wrote, and participated in literary discussions there for decades. His friendships with writers including C. S. Lewis were also connected to Oxford’s intellectual community.

Tolkien retired from his Oxford professorship in 1959, although he continued writing and revising his legendarium. His academic work and his fiction were closely related in subject matter, but his novels were literary creations rather than university textbooks.