Cover of the first edition of
The Battle of Life from 1846.
The Battle of Life: A Love Story is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in 1846. 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 a 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. (One scene takes place at Christmas time, but it is not the final scene.) The story bears some resemblance to The Cricket on the Hearth in two aspects: 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' lesser-known works and has never attained any high level of popularity, a trait it shares among the Christmas Books with The Haunted Man.
An adaptation of The Battle of Life by Albert Richard Smith was produced with success at the Surrey Theatre in 1846.
[edit] External links
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| Christmas books |
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| Short stories |
- Sunday Under Three Heads (1836)
- The Lamplighter (1838)
- A Child's Dream of a Star (1850)
- Captain Murderer
- The Long Voyage (1853)
- The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices (1857) (with Wilkie Collins)
- Hunted Down (1859)
- The Signal-Man (1866)
- George Silverman's Explanation (1868)
- Holiday Romance (1868)
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Christmas
short stories |
- A Christmas Tree (1850)
- What Christmas is, as We Grow Older (1851)
- The Poor Relation's Story (1852)
- The Child's Story (1852)
- The Schoolboy's Story (1853)
- Nobody's Story (1853)
- Going into Society (1858)
- Somebody's Luggage (1862)
- Mrs Lirriper's Lodgings (1863)
- Mrs Lirriper's Legacy (1864)
- Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions (1865)
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Short story
collections |
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| Non-fiction |
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| Poetry & plays |
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| Collaborations |
- Household Words
- The Seven Poor Travellers (1854) (with Wilkie Collins, Adelaide Proctor, George Sala and Eliza Linton)
- The Holly-tree Inn (1855) (with Wilkie Collins, William Howitt, Harriet Parr, and Adelaide Procter)
- The Wreck of the Golden Mary (1856) (with Wilkie Collins, Adelaide Proctor, Harriet Parr, Percy Fitzgerald and Rev. James White)
- The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) (with Wilkie Collins)
- A House to Let (1858) (with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Procter)
- All the Year Round
- The Haunted House (1859) (with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Procter, George Sala, and Hesba Stretton)
- A Message from the Sea (1860) (with Wilkie Collins, Robert Buchanan, Charles Allston Collins, Amelia Edwards, and Harriet Parr)
- Tom Tiddler's Ground (1861) (with Wilkie Collins, John Harwood, Charles Allston Collins, and Amelia Edwards)
- The Trial for Murder (1865) (with Charles Allston Collins)
- Mugby Junction (1866) (with Andrew Halliday, Charles Allston Collins, Hesba Stretton and Amelia Edwards)
- No Thoroughfare (1867) (with Wilkie Collins)
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| Articles & essays |
- A Visit to Newgate (1836)
- Epitaph of Charles Irving Thornton (1842)
- In Memoriam W. M. Thackeray (1850)
- A Coal Miner's Evidence (1850)
- Frauds on the Fairies (1853)
- The Lost Arctic Voyagers (1854)
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