Charles Leslie Wrenn

Charles Leslie Wrenn (1895–1969) was a British 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. 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. Elliot.

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

References

• Charles Leslie Wrenn Books, Alibris
• Publications by C. L. Wrenn listed in Copac
• Glyer, Diana (2007), The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community, Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, ISBN 978-0-87338-890-0.

External links

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