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IN 1966 a short, neat, affable American arrived in London for the second time on a sabbatical from the successful Detroit magazine for which he was art director. Donald Weeks was brought to England by his passion for the writer Frederick William Rolfe, otherwise known as Baron Corvo, "saint or madman"; and never returned.
After the publication of his 1971 biography Corvo the polymathic Weeks, a driven literary sleuth, became the acknowledged authority on Rolfe. If a toothpick was suspected of a Corvo connection Weeks would not rest until he had discovered its provenance.
Just before he started with Chevrolet's house magazine, Friends, in 1953 his Corvo obsession erupted. A.J.A. Symons's so-called "experiment in biography" The Quest for Corvo, first published in 1934 and newly reissued by the Folio Society, had ignited it. By 1964, after Weeks had been Friends's art director for eight years - piling up awards for his innovative layouts (using a new artist, Edward Gorey), sought after for talks on design - he at last owned all of Corvo's first editions. Parts of his private Corvo collection, the largest in the world, including letters, manuscripts, drawings, paintings, photographs, ephemera and memorabilia, were exhibited in London, Iowa and Detroit. Through his Corvo mania he helped found the Book Club of Detroit and was its president and editor of its newsletter.
Donald Weeks was born in Detroit in 1921. A very private person, who never mentioned religion, he came from a Lutheran churchgoing family. Johann Himmler, his maternal grandfather, was the first Lutheran lay preacher in Michigan. His mother, Helen, was a charter member of the Iroquois Avenue Christ Lutheran Church in Indian Village, Detroit. His father, an infantryman in the First World War, may have died before he was born.
"I did not decide on art as a vocation," he said. "It just seemed to be the only thing for me to follow." In his primary and intermediate school Donald won awards for posters; then his talents were moulded...