The Story of Doctor Dolittle. Being the History of his Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts. Never Before Printed. Told by Hugh Lofting. Illustrated by the Author

New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1920. First edition. Color frontispiece, two black and white plates, illustrations throughout (some full page). xii, 180 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Orange boards decoratively stamped in blue, printed color illustration affixed to upper board. Fine fresh copy in very good plus dust jacket (slightly chipped at head of spine panel, tiny losses at corners). First edition. Color frontispiece, two black and white plates, illustrations throughout (some full page). xii, 180 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. A superb copy of one of the greatest twentieth-century children’s books, introducing the beloved doctor in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, the “unworldly, deeply (truncated) humane physician/naturalist John Dolittle, who learns the language of the animals from his parrot Polynesia. His wise innocence, his almost epiphanic eagerness to learn new things (and the preternatural eyesight that allows him to see them first), along with a mysterious, grave sang-froid: all struck a new note in 1920 … illustrated by Lofting himself, in a style whose simplicity is deceptive; he was in fact an illustrator of genius … no matter how fantastical the events depicted, the doctor’s response is unfailingly scientific: he is a practising Scientist who treats the world as open to investigation, to ‘the lure of scientific discovery’” (SFE).

Hugh Lofting (1886-1947) began writing during his service in the trenches in the Great War. He was severely wounded in 1917 and invalided out. He followed The Story of Doctor Dolittle with eight further books though 1933, and two volumes were published posthumously. There have been two film adaptations. Lofting’s story is stronger than either of them.

RARE IN DUST JACKET. (Inventory #: 368806)