Trapp was born in Carterton, New Zealand, on 16 July 1925, and was educated at Dannevirke School.
He began his career as an academic at that institution in 1950,[2] after a spell working at the Alexander Turnbull Library from 1946 to 1950.
Trapp married Elayne Falla, a fellow Victoria University alumni, in 1953 in England.
[3] He also published a volume of Essays in the Renaissance and Classical Tradition (1990) and Studies of Petrarch and His Influence (2003).
[3] His work on John Colet and other English humanists, and his study of Petrarch, were published in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes for many years.