Audiobook · read by volunteers
Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
Hugh Lofting (1886–1947)
Read by James Smith, Lucy Burgoyne (1950-2014), Denny Sayers (d. 2015), Nichole Karl, Mary Anderson, Betsie Bush, Farida, Stefan Schmelz, Fracture, Danielle Buttrey · 61 chapters · 7 h 42
About the book
Doctor John Dolittle has given up human patients for animals, and animals, who can at last make themselves understood, adore him. In this sequel, his adventures take him far beyond Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. The story is told by Tommy Stubbins, the son of a cobbler, who dreams of going to sea and finds that the great naturalist needs an assistant. Together with a crew of devoted creatures they set out on a voyage across the ocean and meet strange islands, strange people and a few strange perils on the way. It is a book full of warmth, comic invention and genuine affection for the natural world. Sixty-one short chapters make it ideal for bedtime listening, or for a family journey, with nearly eight hours of adventure to share.
Introduction
Hugh Lofting was born in 1886 and died in 1947. He is remembered for the Doctor Dolittle books, a series of children's stories about a physician who prefers animals to people and learns to speak their languages. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle appeared in 1922 and is the second book in the series. It was a great success and is often considered the finest of them, and it won a major American prize for children's literature, the Newbery Medal.
The idea for the doctor, Lofting later explained, came to him as a soldier in the First World War, when he wrote illustrated letters to his children about the animals he saw at the front and the question of what happened to the wounded horses. Whatever its origin, the series has a gentle humane spirit, and it asks young readers to treat animals as creatures with their own thoughts and their own rights. Readers today should know that the early books also contain attitudes and depictions of their time that are now seen as outdated.
This recording was made by volunteers of LibriVox, who share the reading of the book's sixty-one chapters. It lasts a little under eight hours, and each chapter is short enough to be enjoyed on its own.
Why listen? Because the book is still a delight. Its mixture of seafaring, natural history and talking animals has a freshness that has lasted for a century, and its narrator, a boy learning a trade, makes a lively guide.
Public domain
Hugh Lofting died in 1947: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text