At the age of ten Jeremiah entered Ackworth School in Yorkshire, where he acquired some skill in wood engraving.

On a visit to the Lake District with his brother in the summer of 1819 he made the acquaintance of Robert Southey and of William Wordsworth, whose "white pantaloons" and "hawk's nose" are described in his diary.

[1] Wiffen's first appearance in print was in the European Magazine of October 1807, with an Address to the Evening Star versified from Ossian.

[1] With James Baldwin Brown the elder and Thomas Raffles, Wiffen published Poems by Three Friends (1813); the joint authorship was acknowledged in the second edition (1815).

The publication of the completed version of Jerusalem Delivered was delayed by a fire in the printing office; it appeared in 1824, dedicated to the Duchess of Bedford, with a life of Tasso and a list of English crusaders, 2 vols.

[2] The Quarterly Review concluded that Wiffen, as a translator of Tasso, was ahead of John Hoole and James Leigh Hunt, but some way behind Edward Fairfax.

Other publications were a Geographical Primer (1812), and Thoughts on the Creation, Fall, and Regeneration, 1826, by John Humbles, "a Bedfordshire peasant" which Wiffen edited.