Bertha Runkle (1879-1958) was an American novelist and playwright born in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. Her father died when she was young and at the age of nine she and her mother moved to New York City. She grew up in a literary family, her father had been a respected New York lawyer who had served as legal counsel for the New York Tribune where her mother had worked as an editorial writer and who was reportedly the first American woman to be on the staff of a major metropolitan daily newspaper. An avid golf and of tennis player, Bertha Runkle was only twenty-one years old when her book The Helmet of Navarre was first serialized in The Century Magazine. The book went on to become No. 3 on the list of bestselling novels in the United States for the entire year of 1901 as determined by the New York Times. The year of its release, she teamed up with playwright Lawrence Marston to adapt her story to the Broadway stage in a production by Charles Frohman.