The Battle of Life
The Battle of Life: A Love Story is an 1846 novel by Charles Dickens. It is the fourth of his five "Christmas Books", coming after The Cricket on the Hearth and followed by The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain.
The setting is an English village that stands on the site of an historic battle. Some characters refer to the battle as a metaphor for the struggles of life, hence the title.
Battle is the only one of the five Christmas Books that has no supernatural or explicitly religious elements. The story bears some resemblance to The Cricket on the Hearth in two respects: it has a non-urban setting, and it is resolved with a romantic twist. It is even less of a social novel than is Cricket. As is typical with Dickens, the ending is a happy one.
It is one of Dickens's lesser-known works and has never attained any high level of popularity – a trait it shares with The Haunted Man, in contrast to the other of his Christmas Books.
Excerpted from The Battle of Life on Wikipedia.
Christmas Books: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
The Battle of Life
| Author | Charles Dickens |
| Country | England |
| Genre | Romances, Love story |
| Copyright | Public domain in the United States. |
| Book cover | "The Battle of Life: A Love Story" Original Image: Bradbury & Evans| wikimedia |
| Ebooks | Project Gutenberg |
| Scans | Google-digitized |
| Audio | Librivox | Internet Archive Reader: Mark F. Smith 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 |
| Read online | The Battle of Life |
