Douglas Gray, FBA (17 February 1930 – 7 December 2017) was a New Zealand-born literary scholar who was the first J. R. R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, both between 1980 and 1997. He began his career as an assistant lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington (1952–54), where he had graduated in 1952. Gray then studied at Merton College, Oxford, where he gained a BA in 1956. He then lectured at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1961, remaining there until his appointment to the Tolkien chair in 1980; he had also been a university lecturer since 1976. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1989.[1][2]