FANTASIES & HARD KNOCKS: MY LIFE AS A PRINTER

8vo. cloth, dust jacket. xviii, 795+(1) pages. Signed by the author on half title. Table of contents, preface, afterword, two appendices, acknowledgments, credits and permissions, recipes index, general index. Biographical sketch of the author on dust jacket. A memoir by one of the most noted handpress printers of the 20th century. Chronicles the author's work with his Plain Wrappers Press and the Ex Ophidia imprint. The work also includes many personal reflections and recollections. Frontispiece, and over 450 illustrations in text, as well as 65 recipes. Rummonds has worked closely with many of the most-admired and renowned authors and artists in 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 Seldon, Fulvio Testa, Joe Tilson, and Ger van Dijck. His memoir offers rare insights about their personal lives and his struggles when dealing with them. Between 1977 and 1982, Rummonds was joined at the press by Alessandro Zanella, a talented printer in his own right. Rummonds, the first openly gay handpress printer, is not bashful when talking about his personal life or his tempestuous relationships with his writers and artists, as well as his many lovers, which at times were happy and funny, risqué and absurd, sad and melancholy.…