Hugh Lofting

Hugh Lofting (born Jan. 14, 1886, Maidenhead, Berkshire, Eng.—died Sept. 26, 1947, Santa Monica, Calif., U.S.) was an English-born American author of a series of children’s classics about Dr. Dolittle, a chubby, gentle, eccentric physician to animals, who learns the language of animals from his parrot, Polynesia, so that he can treat their complaints more efficiently. Much of the wit and charm of the stories lies in their matter-of-fact treatment of the doctor’s bachelor household in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, where his housekeeper, Dab-Dab, is a duck and his visitors and patients are animals.

Lofting attended a Jesuit boarding school in Derbyshire from the age of eight. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in 1904–05 and completed his studies in civil engineering at the London Polytechnic in 1906–07. His work took him to Africa, the West Indies, and Canada, but in 1912 he decided to become a writer and settled in New York City. He lived most of his life in the United States, but the ambience of all his books is English. Since Dr. Dolittle was originally created to entertain Lofting’s children in letters he sent from the front during World War I, it is not surprising that he was a firm opponent of war, violence, and cruelty. After serving in Flanders and France, Lofting was wounded and invalided out. The Story of Dr. Dolittle, the first of his series, appeared in 1920 and won instant success. He wrote one Dr. Dolittle book a year until 1927, and these seven are generally considered the best of the series—certainly the sunniest. The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle (1922) won the Newbery Medal as the best children’s book of the year.

Wearying of his hero, Lofting tried to get rid of him by sending him to the moon (Dr. Dolittle in the Moon, 1928), but popular demand compelled him to write Dr. Dolittle’s Return in 1933. The last of the series, Dr. Dolittle and the Secret Lake, was 13 years in the writing and was published posthumously in 1948.

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A motion picture, Doctor Dolittle (1967), heightened the already worldwide interest in his books, and several were reissued with new illustrations—Lofting’s own apt and charming drawings had accompanied the original publications. Dr. Dolittle; A Treasury (1967) collected outstanding episodes from the series.

Lofting also wrote books in which the doctor did not appear, including The Story of Mrs. Tubbs (1923) and its sequel, Tommy, Tilly, and Mrs. Tubbs (1934).