Charles Leslie Wrenn

Charles Leslie Wrenn (1895–1969) was an English scholar. He became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford in 1945, the successor in the chair of J.R.R. Tolkien, and held the position until 1963. Wrenn was a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. He was also a member of the Oxford literary discussion group known as the "Inklings", which included C. S. Lewis and Tolkien, and met for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. Some of the work published by Wrenn includes The English Language (1949), A Study of Old English Literature (1967), and An Old English Grammar, written with Randolph Quirk (1955, rev. 1957). His literary interests were primarily comparative literature and later poets including T. S. Eliot.

Selected writings

• The English Language by C.L. Wrenn. London: Methuen, 1949
• Beowulf, with the Finnsburg fragment; edited by C. L. Wrenn. London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1953. Rev. & enlarged ed. (=2nd ed.) London: Harrap, 1958. 3rd ed.; fully revised by W. F. Bolton. London: Harrap, 1973. (Reissued by the University of Exeter, 1988.)
• An Old English Grammar; by Randolph Quirk and C. L. Wrenn. London: Methuen, 1955
• English and Medieval Studies Presented to J. R. R. Tolkien on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday; edited by Norman Davis and C. L. Wrenn. London: Allen and Unwin, 1962

Further reading

• Charles Leslie Wrenn Books, Alibris
• Publications by C. L. Wrenn listed in Copac

External links

• Photographs of C. L. Wrenn at the National Portrait Gallery