Author: Wiffen, Jeremiah Holmes
Biography:
WIFFEN, Jeremiah Holmes (1792-1836: ODNB)
Translator and poet. He was born at Woburn, the eldest of six children born to Quakers John Wiffen (d 1802) and his wife Elizabeth Pattison. His father and then his mother ran an ironmonger’s shop. He was educated at Ackworth, a Friends’ school near Pontefract, and in 1807 was apprenticed to a schoolmaster in Epping, Essex. His first published poem was printed in the European Magazine in the same year. In 1811 he opened a school in Woburn and continued his own education in the evenings, focusing especially on languages. The duke of Bedford appointed him as his secretary and librarian at Woburn Abbey in 1821. His translations, Works of Garcilasso de la Vega (1823) and Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1824), were well received—particularly the latter which went to several editions both during his lifetime and after his death. In 1828 he married Mary Whitehead, a Quaker. The couple moved into a cottage provided by the duke of Bedford at Froxfield; they had three daughters. His final published work, the result of years of research, was Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell (1828). Having suffered from shortness of breath for some time, he died suddenly at Froxfield. He was buried in the Quaker burial ground at Woburn Sands. (ODNB 3 Jan. 2021; S. R. Pattison, ed. The Brothers Wiffen [1880])
Other Names:
- J. H. Wiffen
- Jeremiah Holmes Wiffin