| Doctor Dolittle | |
|---|---|
 Portrait from the title page of The Story of Doctor Dolittle. | |
| First appearance | The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920) |
| Created by | Hugh Lofting |
| Portrayed by | |
| Voiced by | Bob Holt {1970} John Stephenson (The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, 1984) |
| In-universe information | |
| Alias | King Jong Thinkalot |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Doctor, naturalist |
| Family | Lisa Dolittle (wife, 1998 series) Charisse Dolittle (daughter, 1998 series) Maya Dolittle (daughter, 1998 series) Lily Dolittle (wife, 2020 film) |
| Relatives | Sarah Dolittle (sister) Archer Dolittle (father, 1998 series) |
| Nationality | British American (1998–2001) |
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.[1]
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.[1]
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".[1] 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.