Bertha Runkle (1879-1958) was an American novelist and playwright born in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. From a literary family, she wrote five novels. Her first and best known, The Helmet of Navarre, was made into a Broadway play. Bertha Runkle was only twenty-one years old when her book The Helmet of Navarre was first serialized in The Century Magazine. She had the story in her mind for two years or so, and the actual writing took about four months. The title was taken from a passage in Thomas Babbington Macaulay's poem Ivry. The magazine serialization had been so well received that 100,000 copies were printed for the first edition of the book.