Charles Leslie Wrenn

Career

Wrenn joined the University of Durham in 1917, where he worked for three years lecturing English, before becoming Principal and Professor of English at Pachaiyappa's College at the University of Madras, before leaving in 1921 to spend seven years at the newly formed University of Dhaka as Professor of English. Wrenn returned to the UK, working as a lecturer in the department of English Language and Literature at the University of Leeds between 1928 and 1930. During his time at King's, Wrenn served as Dean of the faculty of Arts and was chairman of council of its school in Slavonic studies. In 1933, Wrenn delivered a paper on Standard Old English to the Philological Society which was seen as a major corrective to Henry Sweet's idea that West Saxon was standardised.

Wrenn returned to Oxford in 1945 becoming the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, the successor in the chair to J.R.R. Tolkien who had become the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature. He would also become the chairman of the board of faculty of English, and an O'Donnell lecturer in Celtic studies.

In 1954, Wrenn was appointed Vicegerent to act as Master in the absence of Frederick Homes Dudden, becoming the first Professor Fellow to hold a college office. Wrenn visited the Soviet Union in the early 1950s as a representative of British linguistic studies. His literary interests were primarily comparative literature and later poets including T. S. Eliot.

Selected Writings Some of the work published by Wrenn include: The English Language (1949) A Study of Old English Literature (1967)