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Doctor Dolittle
Doctor John Dolittle is the central character of a series of children's books by Hugh Lofting starting with the 1920 The 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 a naturalist, using his abilities to speak with animals to better understand nature and the history of the world.
Doctor Dolittle first appeared in the author's illustrated letters to his children, written from the trenches during World War I when actual news, he later said, was either too horrible or too dull. The stories are set in early Victorian England, where Doctor John Dolittle lives in the fictional English village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh in the West Country.
Doctor Dolittle has a few close human friends, including his young assistant Tommy Stubbins, and Matthew Mugg, the Cats'-Meat Man. The animal team includes Polynesia (a parrot), Gub-Gub (a pig), Jip (a dog), Dab-Dab (a duck), Chee-Chee (a monkey), Too-Too (an owl), the Pushmi-pullyu, and a white mouse later named simply "Whitey". Later on, in the 1925 novel Doctor Dolittle's Zoo, Whitey founds (with the doctor's help) the Rat and Mouse Club, whose membership eventually reaches some 5,000 rats and mice.
One inspiration for his character appears to be the Scottish surgeon John Hunter.
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 sequel The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (1922) won the prestigious Newbery Medal. The next three, Doctor Dolittle's Post Office (1923), Doctor Dolittle's Circus (1924), and Doctor Dolittle's Caravan (1926) take place during and/or after the events of The 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 Five more novels followed, and after Lofting's death in 1947, two more volumes of short, previously unpublished pieces appeared.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 between Doctor Dolittle's Return and Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake.
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Doctor Dolittle AI simulator
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Doctor Dolittle
Doctor John Dolittle is the central character of a series of children's books by Hugh Lofting starting with the 1920 The 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 a naturalist, using his abilities to speak with animals to better understand nature and the history of the world.
Doctor Dolittle first appeared in the author's illustrated letters to his children, written from the trenches during World War I when actual news, he later said, was either too horrible or too dull. The stories are set in early Victorian England, where Doctor John Dolittle lives in the fictional English village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh in the West Country.
Doctor Dolittle has a few close human friends, including his young assistant Tommy Stubbins, and Matthew Mugg, the Cats'-Meat Man. The animal team includes Polynesia (a parrot), Gub-Gub (a pig), Jip (a dog), Dab-Dab (a duck), Chee-Chee (a monkey), Too-Too (an owl), the Pushmi-pullyu, and a white mouse later named simply "Whitey". Later on, in the 1925 novel Doctor Dolittle's Zoo, Whitey founds (with the doctor's help) the Rat and Mouse Club, whose membership eventually reaches some 5,000 rats and mice.
One inspiration for his character appears to be the Scottish surgeon John Hunter.
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 sequel The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (1922) won the prestigious Newbery Medal. The next three, Doctor Dolittle's Post Office (1923), Doctor Dolittle's Circus (1924), and Doctor Dolittle's Caravan (1926) take place during and/or after the events of The 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 between Doctor Dolittle's Return and Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake.