In late 1636 a young New College fellow named Daniel Vivian was given leave by the college to travel abroad for a year. This was an unusual but not unknown academic digression. We know in granular detail about this early version of the ‘Grand Tour’ because Vivian kept careful notes on every single place he visited, and then wrote these up as an extended, literary prose narrative of 350 quarto pages, preserved in his own calligraphic manuscript, complete with a sheaf of commendatory poems by his friends tipped into the front of his manuscript.

Daniel Vivian’s Grand Tour, 1636–37
New College Library, Oxford, MS 348, f. 2 v [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford