Charles W. Kent was born in Kalona, in Louisa County, Virginia, on September 27, 1860.

He then studied in Germany, attending university in Gottingen and Berlin, and received his PhD in 1887 in Leipzig.

He returned to the US, to the University of Virginia, where he taught French and German for a year, and then left for the University of Tennessee, where he became professor of English and modern languages.

He left Knoxville in 1893 and returned to Virginia, where he became the first chair in the Linden Kent Memorial School of English Literature (the school was named for an older brother of his).

[2] He also edited Cynewulf's Elene (1889),[4] besides collections of poems including works by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Burns, a posthumous edition of fellow Virginian Daniel Bedinger Lucas, and Edgar Allan Poe.