Hugh Lofting
born Jan. 14, 1886, Maidenhead, Berkshire,
Eng.
died Sept. 26, 1947, Santa Monica, Calif., U.S.
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.
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).
