likely to offend Protestant taste), publishing it first Paris in 1670. A still more censored version was published in London the same year. Lassels's Voyage of Italy became the most influential English guidebook of the period, conditioning the first impressions of many tourists to that country. It is particularly notable for summarizing Vasari's Vite de' piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, as well as Carlo Ridolfi's Le Maraviglie dell'Arte and other Italian sources where relevant. It thus provided the basis for most subsequent guidebooks as well as manuscript accounts, including even the 'Diary' of John Evelyn, though the latter purports to date from the 1640s. The unprecedented attention it paid to art and architecture encouraged the phenomenon of the eighteenth-century style ‘grand tour’ (a term coined by Lassels) according to which art and antiquities eventually prevailed over all other subjects, religious or secular. It was translated and published in French and German and was still being reprinted in the early eighteenth century. Aside from Lassels's published works, notes and two or three completed pietistic manuscripts ('Collections … out of Baronius' and the two-volume 'Apologie for the Roman Catholicks') in his fine, distinctive hand survive at Oscott College, near Birmingham. References Godfrey Anstruther, The seminary priests, 2 (1975), 184–5 E. H. Burton and T. L. Williams, eds., The Douay College diaries, third, fourth and fifth, 1598–1654, Catholic Record Society, 10 (1911) Edward Chaney,The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the Renaissance, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2000). R. Lassels, The description of Italy, National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 15.2.15 R. Lassels, The voyage of Italy, N. Yorks. CRO, ZRL 9/6/1 R. Lassels, The voyage of Italy (c.1664), Yale U., Osborn Shelves G.324 Wood, Athenae Oxonienses'', new edition... External links 1600s births 1668 deaths English travel writers 17th-century English Roman Catholic priests