Sir, - In his review of Benedict Kiely's biography of William Carleton (November 22nd), Brian Fallon referred to Carleton's acquaintance with Caesar Otway as a "dubious chapter" in Carleton's life, and then implied that Otway was to blame for the anti-Catholicism of Carleton's early work.This charge has often been levelled at Otway, who was William Carleton's first editor, but recent research by Robert Lee Wolff argues that Carleton's early evangelical Protestantism was very much of his own choice, and preceded his friendship with Otway. Nonetheless, a stigma remains attached to Otway's name which has led to his virtual exclusion from academic considerations of 19th-century Irish literature before the Famine. An honourable exception to this rule is Benedict Kiely's own Otway's Magic Mountain, published in The Bell in January 1948, which rightly praises Otway's Sketches in Ireland (1827), a classic of Irish travel writing. Like the bulk of Carleton's work, this travelogue is long out of print, and deserves to be republished. - Yours etc.,John McAuliffe,Department of English,University College, Galway.