| Doctor Dolittle | |
|---|---|
 Portrait from the title page ofThe Story of Doctor Dolittle | |
| First appearance | The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920) |
| Created by | Hugh Lofting |
| Portrayed by | |
| Voiced by | Bob Holt (1970–1971) John Stephenson (The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, 1984) |
| In-universe information | |
| Alias | King Jong Thinkalot |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Doctor, naturalist |
| Family | Lisa Dolittle (wife,1998 series) Charisse Dolittle (daughter, 1998 series) Maya Dolittle (daughter, 1998 series) Lily Dolittle (wife,2020 film) |
| Relatives | Sarah Dolittle (sister) Archer Dolittle (father, 1998 series) |
| Nationality | British American (1998–2001) |
Doctor John Dolittle is the central character of a series of children's books byHugh Lofting starting with the 1920The Story of Doctor Dolittle. He is a physician who shuns human patients in favour of animals, with whom he can speak in their own languages. He later becomes anaturalist, using his abilities to speak with animals to better understand nature and the history of the world.[1]
Doctor Dolittle first appeared in the author's illustrated letters to his children, written from thetrenches duringWorld War I when actual news, he later said, was either too horrible or too dull. The stories are set in earlyVictorian England, where Doctor John Dolittle lives in the fictional English village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh in theWest Country.[1]
Doctor Dolittle has a few close human friends, including his young assistantTommy Stubbins, andMatthew Mugg, theCats'-Meat Man. The animal team includesPolynesia (aparrot),Gub-Gub (apig),Jip (adog),Dab-Dab (aduck),Chee-Chee (amonkey),Too-Too (anowl), thePushmi-pullyu, and a white mouse later named simply "Whitey".[1] Later on, in the 1925 novelDoctor Dolittle's Zoo, Whitey founds (with the doctor's help) theRat and Mouse Club, whose membership eventually reaches some 5,000 rats and mice.
One inspiration for his character appears to be the Scottish surgeonJohn Hunter.[2][3]
The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts Never Before Printed (1920) begins the series. The sequelThe Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (1922) won the prestigiousNewbery Medal. The next three,Doctor Dolittle's Post Office (1923),Doctor Dolittle's Circus (1924), andDoctor Dolittle's Caravan (1926) take place during and/or after the events ofThe Story of Doctor Dolittle. Five more novels followed, and after Lofting's death in 1947, two more volumes of short, previously unpublished pieces appeared.
The stories, in order of publication, are:
Gub Gub's Book: An Encyclopedia of Food (1932) is purportedly written by the pig Gub-Gub. It is a series of food-themed animal vignettes. In the text, the pretence of Gub-Gub's authorship is dropped; Tommy Stubbins, Dr. Dolittle's assistant, explains that he is reporting a series of Gub-Gub's discourses to the other animals of the Dolittle household around the evening fire. Stubbins also says that the full version of Gub-Gub's encyclopaedia, which was an immense and poorly-organized collection of scribblings written by the pig in a language for pigs invented by Dr. Dolittle, was too long to translate into English.
Doctor Dolittle's Birthday Book (1936) is a little day-book illustrated with pictures and quotations from the earlier stories. It appeared betweenDoctor Dolittle's Return andDoctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake.
"Doctor Dolittle Meets a Londoner in Paris" is a short story included inThe Flying Carpet, pp. 110–19 (1925), an anthology of children's short stories and poems with illustrations byCynthia Asquith.
The character enteredpublic domain in the 1990s, which allowed for the legal creation of derivative works based on it without the need to acquire permission from the Lofting estate, which was required previously.[4][5][6] For example, in April 2021, the Japanese biologist Shinichi Fukuoka created a new storyDr. Dolittle SavesGalápagos Islands which appeared inThe Asahi Shimbun.[7][8]
The main events ofThe Story of Doctor Dolittle take place in 1819 or 1820,[9] although the events of the early chapters seem to be spread over several years.The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle begins in 1839.[10]
Dolittle returned from his journey to the moon inDoctor Dolittle's return during a full lunar eclipse that was visible low in the sky one late evening in spring. This was the first full lunar eclipse for a couple of years, and it took place in May 1844 in real life.[11][12]
Backstory references indicate that Dr. Dolittle travelled to the North Pole in April 1809, and already knew how to speak to some species of animals at that date, suggesting that the early chapters ofThe Story of Doctor Dolittle take place before that date.[13] However, it is possible that the internal chronology is not consistent.
The internal chronology of the books is somewhat different from the publishing order. The first book is followed byDoctor Dolittle's Circus (1924),Doctor Dolittle's Caravan (1926), andDoctor Dolittle and the Green Canary (1950). Only then follows the second book,The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (1922), continued byDoctor Dolittle's Zoo (1925). After that, the publishing order is restored;Doctor Dolittle's Garden (1927) is followed byDoctor Dolittle in the Moon (1928) andDoctor Dolittle's Return (1933), ending withDoctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake (1948).[14]
Doctor Dolittle's Post Office (1923) can't be placed anywhere in the internal chronology without creating contradictions.Doctor Dolittle's Circus contains references to events that occurred inPost Office, indicating thatPost Office must precedeCircus.[15] But the Prologue ofPost Office indicates just as definitely that it must happen sometime afterCircus.[16] Furthermore, in the narrative sequence that stretches from the end of the first book, throughCircus andCaravan, toGreen Canary, there's no gap into whichPost Office could be inserted. For the sake of a reading order, the most logical options are to placePost Office immediately beforeCircus, or immediately afterGreen Canary.
The stories, in order of internal chronology, are:
There have been a number of adaptations of the Doctor Dolittle stories in other media:
Audio:
Stages
Film:
Animation:
Video games:
A Russian children's novelDoctor Aybolit (Doctor Oh-it-hurts) byKorney Chukovsky (first published in 1924) was loosely based on the stories of Doctor Dolittle. The original novel credited Lofting's work,[27] as did Chukovsky in his memoirs.[28]
Norwegian playwright, songwriter, and illustratorThorbjørn Egner made an album calledDoktor Dyregod (Doctor good-toward-animals) with songs and story based on Doctor Dolittle.
All the books in the series have been translated into Japanese byMasuji Ibuse and into Lithuanian byPranas Mašiotas.
In 1924, Dolittle garnered noticed in Soviet Russia. A publisher ordered two translations. The first was designed for older children, and was written by E. Khavkin. This version was subsequently forgotten and never republished. The second version bore the titleГай Лофтинг. Доктор Айболит. Для маленьких детей пересказал К. Чуковский [Hugh Lofting. Doctor Veterinarian. For young children, as told by K. Chukovsky].
