he first issue of T.C.D. - A College Miscellany was published in 1895 under the editorship of G. Freeman Irwin, and continued for over 80 years with remarkable consistency of format and design. Its content was heavily influenced by the recently defunct literary magazine Kottabos - A College Miscellany, containing as it did several pages of original poetry and prose in each fortnightly issue. It did, however, begin to contain items of college news, trivia and gossip, so becoming the forerunner of the modern campus newspapers that are now published in most of Ireland’s large universities.

As time went by, this newspaper function became more important and Trinity’s literary set deemed it necessary to set up a magazine devoted entirely to poetry and prose (Icarus, 1950). Not satisfied with how T.C.D. was discharging its newsgathering duties, students set up Trinity News, first published in 1953. With very different styles and priorities, but considerable overlap in subject matter, the two newspapers were fierce rivals. Eventually, and tragically, T.C.D. ran out of steam towards the end of the 1970s, and ceased publication in 1979.

It was replaced immediately by New Miscellany, a satirical magazine in rather than same mould as The Piranha, under the editorship of Phillippa Cannon. This, too, lost its way and through the 1980s issues appeared sporadically.

The magazine took on a new lease of life in 1995, when the publication’s 100th aniversary sparked a renewal of interest. Ben Walsh became editor and restored the old name of T.C.D. – A College Miscellany to the publication. Since then, while publication in a given year is often limited to one or two issues, volumes have appeared consistently and in increasingly high quality. Later editors have tended to shorten the magazine’s title to plain Miscellany, or T.C.D. Miscellany as in the most recent volume.