| Hugh
Lofting |
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| Nationality - English |
Profession - Author & Illustrator |
| Date of birth - 14 01 1889
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Date of death - 1947 |
| Place of birth
- Maidenhead : Berkshire, England |
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Hugh John Lofting was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, on January 14, 1886. He was one of six children of an English father, John Brien Lofting, and an Irish mother, Elizabeth Agnes (Gannon) Lofting.
He created the character Dr. Dolittle in letters he wrote his children during his service in The Great War. After he was wounded he was mustered out. He settled in New York City to become a writer. He lived in the United Stated for the rest of his life but wrote with an English sensibility.
Lofting introduced the character of Dr. Dolittle, the rotund and gentle physician to animals in The Voyage of Dr. Dolittle (1922). Dr. Dolittle is a bachelor in the English town of Puddleby-on-the-Marshe. Dab-Dab, a duck, acts as housekeeper and his friends and patients are animals. Dr. Dolittle's parrot Polynesia teaches him the language of animals so he can better minister to his patients.
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After the War, the Loftings moved to Connecticut. There, Hugh Lofting wrote one Doctor Dolittle book a year between 1922 and 1928 - and other books, besides.
He also lectured and gave illustrated talks to children, whose letters he continued to receive in great numbers with many of them believing the Doctor to be a real person. He highly valued those letters, especially the ones he could tell were written from the child's own impulse, rather than as a school assignment.
Lofting did not think of himself as a "children's author," saying: "I make no claim to be an authority on writing or illustrating for children. The fact that I have been successful merely means that I can write and illustrate in my own way. There has always been a tendency to classify children almost as a distinct species. For years it was a constant source of shock to me to find my writings amongst 'Juveniles.' It does not bother me any more now, but I still feel there should be a category of 'Seniles' to offset the epithet."
Hugh Lofting, whose health had been failing, became very ill during the last two years of his life, and he died on September 26, 1947, in Topanga, California, at the age of 61. He is buried in Killingsworth, Connecticut. |
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Hugh Lofting
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