Dr. Charles Kent served as professor of English and modern literature at UT from 1888 to 1893. Appointed by UT President Charles Dabney, he held the MA from the University of Virginia and the PhD from Leipzig. He had also studied at Dabney’s old university, Gottingen, and in Berlin. At Virginia he was a classmate of Woodrow Wilson and was among the inner circle of Wilson’s college friends. In 1890 he secured Wilson as the commencement speaker. In 1892 Kent was the university’s representative on the group that formed the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
Kent began the tradition of scholarly publishing in the English Department and in 1889 published an edition of the Old English poem Elene, complete with introduction, text, notes, and vocabulary. He left the university in 1893 to accept a newly endowed chair at the University of Virginia.