An English writer famous for two things, his seminal detective novel Trent's Last Case, published in 1913, and his books of biography in the four-line humorous verse form he invented, and now known in his honour as the clerihew: see that node for the rules and many examples. He is also commonly known as E.C. Bentley.
He was born in London on 10 July 1875, worked as a journalist on the Daily News and Daily Telegraph, and died in 1956. He was a good friend of G.K. Chesterton, from when they went to school together at St Paul's, and who illustrated his first volume of clerihews, Biography for Beginners, in 1905.
This career may be summed up in a clerihew of my own making. cough cough
Edmund Clerihew Bentley
parodied his subjects gently
in a form he created
which his fat chum illustrated.
No, it's terrible, isn't it? | 
