The Battle of Life: A Love Story
London, Bradbury and Evans, 1846.
1 vol. (105 x 165 mm) with 2 frontispieces, [4] leaves, 175 p. and [1]. Red morocco, spine with raised bands decorated with gilt fillets and compartments, double fillet frame on covers, gilt edges, blue paper doublures and endleaves, wide inner lace border, original boards' wrappers and spine preserved (binding signed by Rivière & Son).
First edition. 13 illustrations by Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield and John Leech.
First separate edition, following the original collected edition published by Chapman & Hall in 1843.
This is the fourth of the five Christmas Books and the only one with no religious reference. Dickens depicts, with tenderness but also cruelty, the trials of a family during the Victorian era. The setting is an English village built on the site of a great historical battle, a metaphor for the struggles a family must endure: Dickens stages a beautiful love story eventually resolved by the passage of time, when Marion, long absent, reappears to explain to her sister Grace the great sacrifice she made for the happiness of her whole family.
A fine copy, despite light rubbing to the joints.
Smith II, 8; Eckel p. 121.
#29390
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