John Charles Dent

John Charles Dent (1841–1888) was a Canadian journalist and historian. Born in England and brought to Upper Canada as a child, he qualified as a lawyer but preferred journalism, worked for several years on newspapers in London and Boston, and returned to Toronto in 1876 to write for the Globe and the Evening Telegram. In the 1880s he produced in quick succession The Canadian Portrait Gallery, four volumes of biographical sketches, The Last Forty Years, a political history of Canada since the union of 1841, and The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion, whose harsh view of William Lyon Mackenzie provoked a long controversy. He died in Toronto at forty-seven.