There are two Merton Professorships of English in the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

: the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, and the Merton Professor of English Literature. The second was created in 1914 when Sir Walter Raleigh's chair was renamed. At the present day both professorships are associated with Merton College, but Dame Helen Gardner held her post in association with Lady Margaret Hall. The occupants of the chairs have been:

Merton Professor of English Language and Literature

• 1885 – 1916: Arthur S. Napier (1853-1916)
• 1916 – 1920: vacant
• 1920 – 1945: H. C. K. Wyld
  Henry Cecil Kennedy Wyld
  Henry Cecil Kennedy Wyld was a significant English lexicographer and philologist.-Early life:Wyld was born in 1870. He studied at Charterhouse from 1883 to 1885. He was privately educated in Lausanne from 1885 to 1888...
  
   (1870-1945)
• 1945 – 1959: J. R. R. Tolkien
  J. R. R. Tolkien
  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
  
  
• 1959 – 1980: Norman Davis
  Norman Davis (academic)
  Norman Davis MBE FBA was Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford, 1959–1980 in succession to J. R. R. Tolkien....
  
  
• 1980 – 1984: vacant
• 1984 – present: Suzanne Romaine

Merton Professor of English Literature

• 1904 – 1922: Walter A. Raleigh
  Walter Raleigh (professor)
  Professor Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh was an English scholar, poet and author.He was born in London, the fifth child and only son of a local Congregationalist minister...
  
   (1861-1922)
• 1922 – 1928: George Stuart Gordon
  George Stuart Gordon
  George Stuart Gordon was a British literary scholar.Gordon was educated at Glasgow University, Oriel College, Oxford ....
  
   (1881-1942)
• 1929 – 1946: David Nichol Smith (1875-1962)
• 1947 – 1957: F.P. Wilson
  F.P. Wilson
  Frank Percy Wilson FBA was Merton Professor of English Literature between 1947 and 1957.- External links :* http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/6239/F-P-Wilson-%28Frank-Percy-Wilson%29.html...
  
   (1889-1963)
• 1957 – 1966: Nevill Coghill
  Nevill Coghill
  Nevill Coghill was a British literary scholar, known especially for his modern English version of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.-Life:...
  
   (1899-1980)
• 1966 – 1975: Helen Gardner (1908-1986)
• 1975 – 2002: John Carey
  John Carey (critic)
  John Carey is a British literary critic, and emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He was born in Barnes, London, and educated at Richmond and East Sheen Boys’ Grammar School, winning an Open Scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. He served in the East...
  
  
• 2002 - present David Norbrook
  David Norbrook
  David Norbrook is Merton Professor of Renaissance English literature at Oxford University. He is a fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He specializes in literature, politics and historiography in the early modern period, and in early modern women's writing. He is currently writing a biography and...