John Charles Dent was born on November 8, 1841, in Wookey, Somerset, England.

He was a journalist, author, and historian. Shortly after his birth, his family emigrated to the Canadian West. Dent received his primary education in Canadian schools, studied law in Brantford, Ontario, and became an attorney in 1865. He practised law for a few years but found the profession did not suit him and was drawn to pursue literary endeavours. He developed his journalistic skills working for The Daily Telegraph and Once a Week in England. In 1867, he moved with his family to Boston, Massachusetts where he worked for the Boston Globe. In 1869, he accepted the position of editor-in-chief of the Toronto Evening Telegram. He continued to write articles for various newspapers, mainly the Toronto Weekly Globe to which he contributed a very notable series of biographical sketches on "Eminent Canadians". In 1880, he gave up his career as a journalist to devote himself entirely to the profession of historian and writer. He began to work on "The Canadian Portrait Gallery" which ran to four large volumes of biographies of Canadian public figures. His other important books are "The Last Forty Years: Canada since the Union of 1841" (1881) and "History of the Rebellion in Upper Canada" (1885–86). A collection of his stories was published posthumously in “The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales” (1888). Dent was elected to fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada in 1887.

In 1866, he married Elsie McIntosh (1846–1923). He died on September 27, 1888, in Toronto, Ontario.