The Story of Doctor Dolittle

Hugh Lofting published The Story of Doctor Dolittle in 1920, and the book started life as a series of illustrated letters he sent home from the trenches of the First World War. Lofting did not want to write about the actual war for his young children, so he invented Doctor John Dolittle of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, an English country physician who learns the language of animals from his parrot Polynesia and gives up human patients to treat them instead.

This first book is a children’s adventure novel with the rough rhythms of a bedtime story Lofting was making up as he went. The doctor is broke. His sister Sarah leaves the house in disgust. The animals turn up to live in his cottage. Then a message comes from a sick monkey in West Africa, and Dolittle ships out with Jip the dog, Dab-Dab the duck, Gub-Gub the pig, Polynesia the parrot, and Chee-Chee the monkey to cure the outbreak. The voyage runs into pirates, the King of the Jolliginki, the Pushmi-pullyu, and a long return journey. Some of the racial portrayals in the original 1920 text have been edited out of later editions. Worth knowing about before reading. The voice itself is warm, slightly absent-minded, and unmistakable.