I’ve now had a chance to read through “Middle-earth, Narnia and Lovecraft’s Dream World: Comparative World-Views in Fantasy” (Crypt of Cthulhu, 1983). It adds some additional points to my previous blog posts about the various similarities of Tolkien and Lovecraft…

* Both Tolkien and Lovecraft maintained that their tales were written primarily for their own “amusement” (this is the word used).

* Blackmore notes that Lovecraft’s biographer de Camp had earlier observed that Tolkien was an unabashed ‘rurophile’ [lover of the rural, in the form of the Shire], just like Lovecraft in his letters and trips. I might also add they were both lovers of garden-like parkland landscapes with many beautiful trees and glades (recall Ithilian and Lorien in The Lord of the Rings).

* Both Tolkien and Lovecraft disliked mechanisation and crassly sub-urban development.

* Lovecraft’s Dreamlands are seen as similar to Middle-earth, in that flora and fauna from the primary world are mixed with the fantastica of the secondary world. The Dreamlands also feature many ancient ruins, as does Middle-earth.

I’ve just thought of a final point of admittedly very loose comparison — fungi. The hobbits are revealed to be inordinately fond of mushrooms, though Tolkien makes no later use of this in terms of inverting it into horror or sinister landscapes/caves. The closest we come is the lair of Shelob, in which the horror is white and webbed rather than white and fungous.