THE BATTLE OF LIFE. A Love Story

London: Bradbury and Evans, 1846. First edition, with the vignette title page in the Todd E1 and Eckel 4 state, rare thus. Engraved frontispiece and vignette title pages. Illustrations by Richard Doyle, John Leech, and others throughout. Small 8vo, in a very handsome antique full dark-green crushed levant morocco binding, the spine with raised bands, lettered in gilt in two compartments, turnovers with richly gilt rolled borders surrounding gilt tooled inner borders, fine French derived marbled endleaves, a.e.g. 175, [1] ads. pp. A very handsome, finely executed binding in excellent and beautifully preserved condition both within and without, the spine panel mellowed slightly to honey as is usual. FIRST EDITION OF CHARLES DICKENS’ “CHRISTMAS BOOK”, THE BATTLE OF LIFE. This was the fourth installment in Dickens’ series of Christmas Books, the first of which was the timeless and brilliant CHRISTMAS CAROL. Dickens managed to find the time to complete the THE BATTLE manuscript while working on DOMBEY AND SON in Switzerland and in December of 1846 the book was released, selling 23,000 copies in the first 24 hours.
This edition was the only one published in Dickens’ lifetime, and it has become of special interest to bibliophiles and collectors due to the four variations of the vignette title. This title page is in accordance with Eckel’s state 4, the D in BRADBURY is unbroken and this copy has the publisher’s imprint.