Charles (William Charles Mark) Kent (1823-1902) was an English poet, biographer, and journalist, born in London. After completing his education at Prior Park and Oscott, he became editor of the Sun (1845-70), studied law at the same time and was called to the bar in 1859 as a member of Middle Temple, but thereafter devoted himself to literature. He edited Weekly Register, a Roman Catholic paper (1874-81). A personal friend of Charles Dickens, he contributed to Household Words and All the Year Round under Dickens’s editorship and to other periodicals. Several volumes of poems, published previously in the forties, fifties, and sixties, provided the materials for his collected Poems (1870).