Although the business was often successful, publishing the famous "Standard Novels" series, they ended their partnership in acrimony three years later.

Richard and his brother, Samuel (1785–1868), both trained in publishing and in 1819 established their own firm in Dorset Street.

They had nine children, one of whom, their eldest surviving son, George Bentley (1828–1895), joined his father in the printing business.

[4] Over the course of a trial three-year period, Bentley was obliged to invest £2,500, find new manuscripts to publish, and act as bookkeeper.

[2][4] The new firm, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, which lasted a little over three years, was located at 8 New Burlington Street.

[5] They fed the market for silver fork novels, including Benjamin Disraeli's The Young Duke (1831) and works by Catherine Gore.

[4] In February 1831 the firm also began publishing one-volume versions of novels that had previously been available only in three-decker form.

[5] The two publishers solicited revisions from living authors, sometimes forcing them to shorten their works so that they would fit into a single volume.

[7] Bentley and Colburn became bitter rivals in the years that followed the dissolution of their partnership, publishing similar series and trying to undersell each other.

[12] Bentley also published important Continental writers, including Alphonse de Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Louis-Adolphe Thiers, François Guizot, Leopold von Ranke and Theodor Mommsen.

He founded Bentley's Miscellany, which first appeared in January 1837, and selected Charles Dickens, known at the time for his Pickwick Papers, as editor.

The periodical was "an immediate success" – 11,000 copies were sold in 1837 – largely as a result of the serialisation of Dickens's Oliver Twist, illustrated by George Cruikshank.

He eventually negotiated an increase to his editorial salary from £40 per month (£20 to edit and 20 guineas to write an article[2]) to £1,000 per year, including additional payments for his novels.

[10] As Wallins explains, "Through nearly four years of negotiations Bentley remained calm in public; privately, he railed against Dickens's constant complaints but then backed down, delayed deadlines, and provided his author with more money as it was demanded.

"[10] In the end, Dickens paid Bentley £2,250 to buy out the rest of his contract and to purchase the copyright to Oliver Twist.

American literature was highlighted, including Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1840).

For the next 20 years, Bentley struggled to keep his firm afloat amidst increasing competition, legal problems, and poor business choices.

[14] Bentley finally resorted to selling copyrights and large numbers of remaindered books to pay his debts.

In 1853, as the economy worsened as a result of the Crimean War, he was forced to sell Bentley's Miscellany to its editor, Ainsworth.

Decades earlier, he had bought the English copyright for many American novels and made steady profits from the publication of these works.

[15] In January 1866 Bentley purchased Temple Bar Magazine; his son, George, became the editor, a position which he held until 1895.

They merged it with Temple Bar, bringing together what Wallins calls "perhaps the finest roster of contributors to any periodical at the time", which included Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Gissing and Robert Louis Stevenson.

[17] Richard Bentley was buried in the family vault in West Norwood Cemetery, London, on 18 September 1871.

According to the Dictionary of National Biography, "Bentley's major contributions to nineteenth-century publishing are the Standard Novels — freshly revised texts of major contemporary authors made affordable for the middle class; Bentley's Miscellany and Temple Bar; the quality of his author list and of his book manufacture; his introduction of high-calibre international writers to British readers; and his founding of a family publishing firm that lasted through two further generations.