Author: Whiffin, Richard
Biography:
WHIFFIN, Richard (fl 1827-36)
Richard Whiffin Esq. maintained a steady production of poems, mainly through the reputable London publisher Smith, Elder, & Co. who advertised his work in the 1830s, but he gives away very little about himself in his works. His first collection, The Highlanders . . . and Other Poems (1827), however, was privately printed and careful to indicate that most of the contents were “written about the year 1813,” meaning to signify perhaps that they were juvenile efforts or at least liable to be unpolished. These circumstances of publication suggest that the author could afford to publish himself and was trying to make his name as an author. He was well educated and probably well connected: his set of translations of Tibullus and others is dedicated to the Marquis of Lansdowne. His last known work, a sequel to The Loves of the Roses (1835) and spurred by the critical success of that work, was The Tale of the White Rose; or, The Story of Canace (1836). Shortly before then, he had issued a list of his publications along with Job, a Dramatic Poem (1834), including the announcement of another volume to come, “Auld Lang Syne Part I and Other Poems, Political and Miscellaneous.” Since that title never materialized, it seems that something put an abrupt end to Whiffin’s career. Although his name is unusual, there are several possible candidates to be found in the public records. Most of them lived in or near Bromley in Kent, which is now part of greater London. Burial records in the years shortly following 1836 offer only one good match, Richard Whiffin of Chislehurst, Kent, who was buried at St. Nicholas’s Chislehurst on 27 Dec. 1837. No reliable further information has been found, and it should be noted that he would have been only 12 at the purported time of composition of the earliest poems. (ancestry.com 13 May 2024; findmypast.com 13 May 2024) HJ