J. H. Wiffen (1792-1836)

Born in Woburn, Bedfordshire, December 1792. He was talented at etching, woodcuts, and seal making, as well as poetry. He loved Percy’s old English ballads and stories of Robin Hood, which he recited to his friends, and made up his own stories as well. Wiffen’s translations of Tasso’s “Jerusalem Delivered,” completed in 1824, and the works of Garcilasso de la Vega, a Spanish poet (1503-36) in 1823, were regarded as priceless literary enterprises. His main poetry collections are Poems by Three Friends (1812), Aonian Hours, and Other Poems (1819), The Brothers Wiffen (1880), among others. (Y. Y.)