Shortly after 1730, when fortunes were being made in the trade by books issued in weekly parts, Wilford, whose place of business was in the Old Bailey, entered the ranks of publishers, but obtained no more than a precarious footing.
In 1732 in his Bookbinder, Bookprinter, and Bookseller refuted, Stackhouse gives a comic account of Wilford and a fellow-publisher Thomas Edlin disputing, at the Castle Tavern in Paternoster Row, as to whether there was money to be made out of a Roman history in weekly parts.
During the summer of 1734 Wilford was arrested by a government messenger in consequence of his name being on the title-page of an opposition squib, Jonathan Swift's anonymous Epistle to a Lady, containing an attack on Sir R. "Brass" (i.e. Robert Walpole).
During 1741 Wilford issued in weekly parts to subscribers Memorials and Characters, together with the Lives of Divers Eminent and Worthy Persons (1600–1740), collected and compiled from above 150 different authors, several scarce pieces and some original MSS.
The Lives (some 240 in number, one-third of them being those of women) were mostly drawn from funeral sermons; some were from Anthony Wood's Athenæ, Ralph Thoresby's Leeds, John Prince's Worthies of Devon.