Manuscripts

The collection

Housed in the Wren Library and the College Archive, the manuscript collections of Trinity College can be divided into three general sections: the medieval western manuscripts, catalogued in four volumes by M. R. James from 1900 – 1904; the modern manuscripts, comprised of letters, photographs, papers and audio-visual material collected by the College more recently, for which cataloguing is ongoing; and the non-western manuscripts which have been catalogued to various standards at various dates after their arrival in the Wren Library.

It ought to be noted that there is an overlap between the medieval western manuscript and modern manuscript catalogues, and a thorough search is only possible by consulting both platforms independently.

Developments

Cataloguing of all of these collections is consistently ongoing, particularly with regard to our modern manuscripts, and we welcome suggestions for improvements or changes to our records. Over the past 15 years we have also been engaged in digitising items from all of these collections, for more information please see the Wren Digital Collections.

Services

As part of our services, we offer:

Quick checks regarding collation, content, extent, provenance, and previous class marks. For enquiries concerning the western medieval and non-western collections, please contact us at [email protected]; for enquiries concerning the modern manuscripts collection, please email [email protected].
Consultations in person can be arranged via email. The details are available on our information for readers page.
For photography, digitisation and reproduction information, see the Wren Digital Collections page.
For general enquiries about former Trinity members, please see our FAQs for Researchers.

Medieval western manuscripts

James’ catalogue follows the arrangement of the manuscripts in the Wren library, with a volume for each of the three bays in which manuscripts are kept. Departing from his practice at other Cambridge colleges, he described every volume he came across: just over half of the 1500 entries in the Trinity catalogue refer to medieval books.

The first volume describes the contents of bay B, essentially theological books and the second describes the historical, literary, miscellaneous and outsize manuscripts found in bay R. Volume three describes the manuscripts of bay O which housed the Gale collection, amassed by Thomas Gale and his son Roger, and donated to the college by the latter in 1738. In 1904 James produced the last volume, containing corrections, an index (which he had, unusually, made himself), and seventeen plates with brief comments.

Online, the James Catalogue contains 1700 entries since it also includes those manuscripts which for a period after the compilation of James’ Catalogue, were added to shelfmarks B, R and O.

An annotated copy of M. R. James’ printed catalogue is kept in the Library. This has additional information. You can read vol 1 (classmark B), vol 2 (classmark R) and vol 3 (classmark O). You can also read James’ original prefaces to these volumes.

All of these collections can be found via the James Catalogue Online:

Modern manuscripts

The term modern manuscripts covers material dating from the 16th century to the present day, and includes not only manuscripts but photographs, recordings, and occasionally printed items. These collections are widely varied in kind and content, but a large proportion of them are papers of former members of the College. From the point of view of classification the modern manuscripts fall into three main categories:

Wren Classes, mainly comprising those manuscripts acquired by the Library before the twentieth century (there is some overlap here with the material catalogued in the James Catalogue). The references of these items begin with B, O, or R.
Additional Manuscripts, comprising a large number of later miscellaneous deposits but also some fairly large groups of papers which would now be classed as Named Collections (see below). The references of these items begin with Add. MS.
Named Collections, mainly comprising larger personal and family archives. The references of items in these collections begin with a distinctive prefix, usually consisting of four letters, e.g. WITT (Wittgenstein). There are also a few collections assembled by collectors with specific interests. The prefixes of these collections, which include the names of the collectors, are Crewe MS (various subjects), Cullum MS (autographs), Rothschild MS (18th century literature), and Sraffa MS (history of economics).

Descriptions of all of these collections can be found in our AtoM catalogue:

Non-western manuscripts & other collections

Information about the non-western manuscript collections can be principally found in the summary printed catalogues. Digitised versions of these catalogues are available.

In addition to the manuscripts held by the Library and Archive, the Wren is also home to a collection of papyri (the Arabic materials having been hand-listed), cuneiform tablets, museum objects, and ‘curios’. For information about these collections, please contact the Library directly at [email protected].