The history of Trinity College Library from the foundation of the College in 1546 to the installation of the books in the newly finished Wren Library in 1695 falls into two distinct periods dividing in about 1600. Although the development of the Library from 1600 on can be followed in some detail from surviving documents, the first half-century of its history is scarcely documented at all. Nevertheless there is some light in the darkness, for it is possible to make a list of the books that were in the collection in 1600. From this it appears that more than two-thirds of the books that were in the Library then are still in it today, so that the actual books can be examined for evidence of how the collection developed in the early days. Even this evidence, however, is so scanty that it has to be interpreted in the light of what is known about the other college libraries of Oxford and Cambridge; and I begin with a brief account of these libraries in the sixteenth century.

In 1500 there were at Oxford ten colleges with libraries: University College (founded 1249), Merton (1264), Balliol (1293), Exeter (1314), Oriel (1326), Queen's (1340), New College (1379), Lincoln (1427), All Souls (1438), and Magdalen (1458); while at Cambridge there were eleven: Peterhouse (1284), Michaelhouse (1324), Clare (1326), the King's Hall (1337), Pembroke (1347), Gonville Hall (1347), Trinity Hall (1350), Corpus (1352), King's (1441), Queens' (1448), and St Catharine's (1473).