The Battle Of Life, Charles Dickens
The Battle Of Life, Charles Dickens
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The Battle Of Life

Author: Charles Dickens

Narrator: Geoffrey Giuliano And The Icon Players

Unabridged: 3 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/16/2020

Categories: Fiction, Classic


Synopsis

While "The Battle of Life" is one of Charles Dickens' Christmas Books - his annual release of a story just before Christmas - this one breaks the tradition by not being concerned with Christmas. Rather, its subtitle, "A Love Story", reveals more of the plot.

The major events of this book take place on land that once was a battleground. That is just a backdrop for Dickens' idea of the real battle of life - finding and winning the right partner, so that life will go on to the next generation. The family that lives there is rather confused in its affections and intentions regarding who should end up with whom. We are thrust into the fight to make things work out, and, happily for a Christmas book, Dickens leads us on to a happy ending.

Produced by Devin Lawerence

Edited by Macc Kay

Production executive Avalon Giuliano

ICON Intern Eden Giuliano

Music By AudioNautix With Their Kind Permission

©2020 Eden Garret Giuliano (P) Eden Garret Giuliano

Geoffrey Giuliano is the author of over thirty internationally bestselling biographies, including the London Sunday Times bestseller Blackbird: The Life and Times of Paul McCartney and Dark Horse: The Private Life of George Harrison. He can be heard on the Westwood One Radio Network and has written and produced over seven hundred original spoken-word albums and video documentaries on various aspects of popular culture. He is also a well known movie actor.

About Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England, where his father was a naval pay clerk. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, near Rochester, another port town. He received some education at a small private school but this was curtailed when his father's fortunes declined.

When Dickens was ten, the family moved to Camden Town, and this proved the beginning of a long, difficult period. When he had just turned twelve, Dickens was sent to work for a manufacturer of boot blacking, where for the better part of a year he labored for ten hours a day, an unhappy experience that instilled him with a sense of having been abandoned by his family. Around the same time Dickens's father was jailed for debt in the Marshalsea Prison, where he remained for fourteen weeks. After some additional schooling, Dickens worked as a clerk in a law office and taught himself shorthand; this qualified him to begin working in 1831 as a reporter in the House of Commons, where he became known for the speed with which he took down speeches.

By 1833 Dickens was publishing humorous sketches of London life in the Monthly Magazine, which were collected in book form as Sketches by "Boz". These were followed by the publication in installments of the comic adventures that became The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, whose unprecedented popularity made the twenty-five-year-old author a national figure. In 1836 he married Catherine Hogarth, who would bear him ten children over a period of fifteen years. Dickens's energies enabled him to lead an active family and social life, including an indulgence in elaborate amateur theatricals, while maintaining a literary productiveness of astonishing proportions. He characteristically wrote his novels for serial publication and was himself the editor of many of the periodicals in which they appeared, including Bentley's Miscellany, the Daily News, Household Words, and All the Year Round. Among his close associates were his future biographer John Forster and the younger Wilkie Collins, with whom he collaborated on fictional and dramatic works. In rapid succession he published Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Barnaby Rudge, sometimes working on several novels simultaneously.

Dickens's celebrity led to a tour of the United States in 1842. There he met Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, and other literary figures, and was received with an enthusiasm that was dimmed somewhat by the criticisms Dickens expressed in his American Notes and in the American chapters of Martin Chuzzlewit. The appearance of A Christmas Carol in 1843 sealed his position as the most widely popular writer of his time; it became an annual tradition for him to write a story for the season, of which the most memorable were The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth. He continued to produce novels at only a slightly diminished rate, publishing Dombey and Son in 1848 and David Copperfield in 1850.

From this point on, his novels tended to be more elaborately constructed and harsher and less buoyant in tone than his earlier works. These late novels include Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. Our Mutual Friend, published in 1865, was his last completed novel and perhaps the most somber and savage of them all. Dickens had separated from his wife in 1858-he had become involved a year earlier with a young actress named Ellen Ternan-and the ensuing scandal had alienated him from many of his former associates and admirers. He was weakened by years of overwork and by a near-fatal railroad disaster during the writing of Our Mutual Friend. Nevertheless, he embarked on a series of public readings, including a return visit to America in 1867, which further eroded his health. A final work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a crime novel much influenced by Wilkie Collins, was left unfinished upon his death on June 9,1870, at the age of 58.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bionic Jean on December 02, 2024

The Battle of Life: A Love Story is a novella by Charles Dickens, which was first published for the Christmas season in 1846. It is one of his most uplifting Christmas tales. The first Christmas book, “A Christmas Carol” had been enormously successful when he published it in 1843, and continues to b......more

Goodreads review by Katie on December 12, 2024

Not my favourite of Dickens's Christmas novellas, but still a sweet story that I really enjoy.......more

Goodreads review by Jason on December 06, 2016

Why do I continue to write reviews for everything I read when nobody reads the bloody things? "Just because there's nobody there is no reason not to carry on the conversation." Well, I suppose you're right, Miss Emily. Thank you. This was read in this compilation: A Christmas Carol and Other Chris......more