Charles Dickens as a Reader

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, 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). In later years he gave himself largely to editorial work-chiefly complete editions of the greater English writers, memoirs, and critiques, and notably Burns (1874), Lamb (1875 and 1893), Moore (1879), Father Prout (1881), and Lord Lytton (1875, 1883, and 1898). He also wrote Leigh Hunt as an Essayist (1888), The Wit and Wisdom of Lord Lytton (1883) and The Humour and Pathos of Charles Dickens (1884).