A lavishly illustrated memoir by one of the pre-eminent handpress printers of the late twentieth century.This remarkably candid book chronicles in great detail the printing and publishing of the forty-two items Rummonds issued with his Plain Wrapper Press and Ex Ophidia imprints, plus twelve interludes that move the narrative along as the story unfolds. Today, even with the perspective of six decades, his reputation stands firm. Fantasies & Hard Knocks is a wondrous memoir including Rummonds's adventures as an American expatriate working in Verona in the 1970s. No bars are held when he recounts the indiscretions of his personal life, often jumping from sensuous peccadillos to periods of deep frustration while trying to master his craft on nineteenth-century handpresses. The text is interspersed with over 450 images, most in color, including illustrations from all his books, as well as 65 recipes for dishes he prepared for his friends and collaborators. He describes the founding of the Plain Wrapper Press in Quito, Ecuador in 1966, moving it to Verona, Italy, in 1970, where it flowered into a press of global renown. In 1982, Rummonds established another press, Ex Ophidia, in Cottondale, Alabama. The book is filled with deeply personal and revealing anecdotes of working closely with many of the most acclaimed and renowned (and sometimes fickle and tempestuous) authors and artists around the world, including authors Jorge Luis Borges, Anthony Burgess, Italo Calvino, C.P. Cavafy, John Cheever, Brendan Gill, Dana Gioia, Luigi Santucci, Vittorio Sereni, Jack Spicer, Laure Vernière, and Paul Zweig, and artists Antonio Frasconi, Mirek, Ariel Parkinson, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Ruggero Savinio, Roger Selden, Fulvio Testa, and Joe Tilson. His memoir offers rare insights about their personal lives and his struggles when dealing with them. Rummonds, the first openly gay American handpress printer, is not bashful when talking about his personal life or his tempestuous relationships with his many lovers, which at times were happy and funny, risqué and absurd, sad and melancholy.