Charles Dickens 
The Battle of Life 

The Battle of Life: A Love Story is an 1846 novel by Charles Dickens. 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 an historic battle. Two sisters, Grace and Marion, live happily in an English village with their two servants, Clemency Newcome and Ben Britain, and their good-natured widower father Dr Jeddler. Dr Jeddler is a man whose philosophy is to treat life as a farce.