Charles S. (Charles Sylvester) Bentley

Charles S. Bentley, also identified as Charles Sylvester Bentley, was an American physician and author born in 1871 and died in 1933. Reliable catalog and reference sources connect him most clearly with The Fifth of November: A Romance of the Stuarts, a historical novel written with F. Kimball Scribner and first published in 1898.

Brief biographical records describe him as a doctor as well as a writer, and an obituary record places him in Plattsburgh, New York, where he was known in the medical profession. That combination of professional medical work and literary ambition gives his career an unusual shape.

Although not much widely documented personal detail appears to survive online, Bentley's work has remained accessible through later reprints and public-domain editions. He is chiefly of interest today as a late-19th-century author who brought historical intrigue, especially the world surrounding the Stuarts and the Gunpowder Plot, to general readers.