Ts letter with ms addition to Donald Weeks from Alan Anderson 2 September 1983

• Reference:GB 237 Coll-1579
• Dates of Creation:1983
• Name of Creator:
  Tragara Pressnn
• Language of Material:English
• Physical Description:
  1 letter

• Scope and Content

  The typescript letter, with ms additions, is from Alan Anderson to Donald Weeks about O'Sullivan connections, with 137 Warrender Park Road letter-heading, and dated 2 September 1983.

  The letter provides details of where copyright copies of the 'little book' are to be sent and on how the British National Bibliography organises itself. It then discusses how 'there are/were a fair number of O'Sullivans in New York, and I'm afraid we have reached an impasse over that fifth brother, whom we will have to name Gummo'. The letter talks of surprise 'that with a brother who was a successful New York lawyer, not to mention another still active in the coffee business, Vincent should have had to endure the dreadful poverty of his last ten years'.

• Administrative / Biographical History

  Alan Anderson was born in 1922. He studied printing at Edinburgh College of Art in the early-1950s when he also founded the Tragara Press. Although the first book with a Tragara Press imprint appeared in 1954, Anderson worked mainly as a bookseller until the 1970s before devoting himself to printing and publishing full-time. He moved to Loanhead, Midlothian, in 1986, and then latterly to Beauly, Inverness-shire. The name, Tragara Press, is derived from the Punta Tragara hotel on the island of Capri, Italy, which had been a favourite destination for Anderson.

  Donald Weeks the Corvo scholar and biographer was a prolific contributor to the bibliography of the Tragara Press. Weeks was born on 18 April 1921, in Detroit, Michigan. As a child he had a talent for art and design, and he specialised in industrial design at Cass Technical High School, Detroit, before winning a scholarship to Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

  After service with US Military Intelligence in the Pacific theatre during the Second World War, he returned to Detroit. There he worked as a freelance graphic designer, and became art editor of the Chevrolet in-house magazine.

  Week's had developed an interest in European literature and he became fascinated with the works of author Frederick William Rolfe (Baron Corvo) (1860-1913). Research into Rolfe led Donald Weeks to England in 1960, and then he moved there in 1966. He spent much of the rest of the 1960s following in Rolfe's footsteps, and began writing a biography. Weeks' work on Corvo (published by Tragara) would go much deeper than that of A. J. A. Symons in his Quest for Corvo (1952).

  Donald Weeks died in Middlesex Hospital on 7 September 2003.

• Access Information

  Open to bona fide researchers, but please contact repository for details in advance of visit.

• Acquisition Information

  Acquired by purchase September 2014. Accession no: E2014.69.

• Archivist's Note

  Catalogued by Graeme D. Eddie 23 April 2015

• Related Material

  Also within Edinburgh University, Special Collections, there is: Coll-1571, being 'Letters from Alan Anderson (b. 1922), The Tragara Press, to Donald Weeks (1921-2003) about Corvine material'; and, Coll-1580, being 'Papers relating to Tragara Press titles, Donald Weeks (1921-2003) and Baron Corvo'.