James Hall

In her essay on black models in Amsterdam and London, Esther Chadwick writes (LRB, 7 January) thatwhen Joshua Reynolds recorded studio sittings for his portrait of Elizabeth Keppel (c.1762), he listed eight appointments with Keppel and two morning sessions with the woman of African heritage who in the picture supplies a garland for the shrine of Hymen. In place of this woman’s name, Reynolds wrote,...

SIR: Philip Roth’s palimpsest of his relationships with Bernard Malamud (LRB, 8 May) will be more useful when reprinted if matters institutional and geographical can be clarified.Understandably, after about thirty years, Mr Roth places Malamud at the University of Oregon (U of O) in Eugene, whereas Malamud’s Oregon years were at Oregon State College, now University, OSU, in Corvllis. Then as now...