ABSTRACT
The Battle of Life is the fourth of Mr Dickens’s annual publications. The Christmas Carol, the first and the best, has reached only a tenth edition. The Chimes was said to be inferior to its predecessors, and is up to the twelfth edition. The Cricket on the Hearth had the worst character of the three, and has, therefore attained its twenty-second edition. The facts merely show that book-buyers and reviewers do not always entertain similar opinions. The latter class pretty generally asserted that Mr Dickens was living—so far as his Annuals were concerned—on his character—eating into his acquired literary capital, while the former has taken care that he should live upon his edition. No book of the past, or many previous issues, has been so successful as the Cricket…On the ratio of increase in the previous publications, the Battle of Life will run into forty-four editions.
