R. W. Chambers

Raymond Wilson Chambers (1874–1942) was an English scholar of Old and Middle English literature, librarian and then Quain Professor of English at University College London. His Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem (1921) gathered the historical, legendary and textual questions surrounding the poem and remained the standard handbook for decades. He also wrote on Thomas More, winning the James Tait Black prize for his 1935 biography, and on the continuity of English prose from Alfred to More. A close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, he helped shape the academic study of early English literature in the twentieth century.