Thank you all for the interesting responses to my question!
As for Tolkien's taste in literature, didn't he and CS.Lewis at one time say something like "There is not enough literature of the kind we like , so we have to write it ourselves!" (Sorry I don't remember the exact quote and cannot find it now)
And I remember that in one letter he wrote that he disliked Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Whimsey. (I do like him, though..
Although not of English mothertongue, I've read Henry James and Virginia Woolf and can imagine that that wasn't what Tolkien would have fancied. (I didn't like it, at any rate. Joyce I've never read, although he is buried in Zürich, where I live. Sorry for the o.t.
)
Now something different which I noticed :
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As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches.
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In this sentence in the foreword, Tolkien used almost the same words as in "Leaf by Niggle" about the painting of the tree:
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The tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots.
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When I read this, I took it immediately for a kind of symbol of LotR. Although Tolkien denied allegory, he wrote in letter # 241 about "Leaf by Niggle":
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Also, of course, I was anxious about my own internal Tree, "The Lord of the Rings". It was growing out of hand, and revealing endless new vistas - and I wanted to finish it, but the world was threatening.
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