Which university employed J.R.R. Tolkien as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor from 1925?

The University of Oxford employed J.R.R. Tolkien as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1925.

Tolkien held the Oxford chair at Pembroke College until 1945. His academic work focused heavily on Old English language and literature, especially the poem Beowulf. He later became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, a position he held from 1945 until 1959.

His scholarship and fiction were closely connected. Knowledge of Germanic languages, medieval texts, mythology, and philology supplied both technical expertise and creative inspiration. Tolkien also developed invented languages with historical relationships and sound changes, applying ideas familiar from comparative linguistics.

He was not primarily trained as a historian of mythology or as a modern novelist. His professional identity was that of a philologist and university professor, even though his fiction eventually made him one of the most influential fantasy authors of the twentieth century.