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Is this the Doctor Dolittle you know?
Chances are it is. But Dr. Dolittle is the main character in a series of fifteen books published between 1920 and 1952. He is able to speak animal languages and goes on various adventures with his animal companions. The book has a history of different approaches to dealing with elements from the original texts that are racist or colonialist.
Other than the name and language skills, Lofting’s original stories in the film above do not have much in common.
More recently, Robert Downey Jr. has donned Dr. Dolittle’s top hat in a rendition that captures a bit more of the original book’s adventure feeling.
The Original Doctor
The character of Dr. John Dolittle first appeared in letters that the author Hugh Lofting illustrated and sent to his children from the trenches of World War I. Dolittle is a physician who feels uncomfortable with humans and prefers his animal companions whose language he learns to speak.
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The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Hugh Lofting
Read chapters: 1-2; 6, 10-12
The next book in the series, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle published in 1922 won the second Newberry Award Medal ever given out. In this book, nearly five times as long, a young boy meets the Doctor and goes on an adventure looking for a missing naturalist, Long Arrow, an example of the noble savage stereotype.
The Dolittle stories were out of print for a while but were reissued in 1988, changing the illustrations that you saw in the above and removing some language.
Which of these were you familiar with? What do you think? Is a character able to be separated from its origin?
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