History Literature / DoctorDolittle

* KarmaHoudini: Circus manager Alexander Blossom gets away with a massive amount of money and leaves the Doctor with a mass of unpaid bills.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: In ''Doctor Doolitle's Circus'', Justice of the Peace Sir William Peabody who after hearing the whole story of the Doctor's adventure with Sophie the seal after he's been imprisoned for presumably murdering his "wife", ensures the charges are dropped and releases him with a amused warning not go dropping any more seals in his county.

* PerpetualPoverty: Although the Doctor prefers it this way.

* TheIdealist: John Doolittle is very much this with scemes such as the Animal's Bank.

* RousseauWasRight

* NiceHat: The good Doctor's iconic top hat, and his most prized possession.

* EverythingIsBetterWithMonkeys: Chee Chee the monkey is one of the Doctor's most constant companions.

* AnimalTalk: Averted to the point that learning new animal languages often drives the plot.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: [[invoked]] According to Mudface, Noah and his sons were not nice people - nor, in fact, the progenitors of humanity.

* NotGoodWithPeople: Downplayed. While Doctor Dolittle is quite open about how he perfers animals to people, especially the so-called "respectable" people who put on airs and care more about appearances than kindness and compassion, he's quite polite and genial to almost everyone he meets, human or animal... but where animals almost universally adore him, people are a ''lot'' more divided in their opinions on him. Those who know him well, and those people he help, view him as a truly great man, while the rest of the world look on him as a silly, but harmless eccentric at best, or a no-good bohemian nuisance at worst.

* SeriesContinuityError: ''Doctor Dolittle's Circus'' is a direct midquel to ''The Story of Doctor Dolittle'' expanding on the Doctor's time exhibiting the Pushmi-Pullyu which is only briefly covered in the first book, however it has Sophie the seal directly reference the events of ''Doctor Dolittle's Post Office'' which are set long after the original book's ending. Either there was time travel involved or Lofting mixed up his chronology... or, if we accept the DirectLineToTheAuthor explanation that all the books were in-universe written by Tommy Stubbins, it could simply be that ''Tommy'' in this case got the chronology mixed up. It even makes sense with the timeline, given how Tommy in ''The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle'' is very clear on how, if he ever forgets a detail while writing the books, Polynesia (who is still with him and has a great memory) will set him straight; but since both ''Doctor Dolittle's Circus'' and ''Doctor Dolittle's Post Office'' take place during a time when Polynesia wasn't with the Doctor, she wasn't present for either of the stories in question and as such couldn't help out with the details. And since the books take place before Tommy met the Doctor, he wasn't there for the events either and was already working from secondhand information when writing the books.

* SignificantName: The good Doctor's name is interpreted as such by the people of Spider Monkey Island, who promptly reappelle him "Jong Thinkalot"

* WorthlessYellowRocks: to an unfortunate badger who happens to chew through a lot of it, gold is just something that gets unpleasantly stuck in your teeth.

* NotGoodWithPeople: Downplayed. While Doctor Dolittle is quite open about how he perfers animals to people, especially the so-called "respectable" people who put on airs and care more about appearances than kindness and compassion, he's quite polite and genial to almost everyone he meets human or animal... but where animals almost universally adore him, people are a ''lot'' more divided in their opinions on him. Those who know him well, and those people he help, view him as a truly great man, while the rest of the world look on him as a silly, but harmless eccentric at best, or a no-good bohemian nuisance at worst.

* LiteraryAgentHypothesis:
** According to ''The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle,'' all the books are supposedly written by Tommy Stubbins -- even the ones where he doesn't appear and the books are told in third person are penned by him, based on stories the Doctor told him about his earlier life (and Polynesia the parrot is credited as Tommy's greatest source of information.)
** ''Gub-Gub's Book: An Encyclopaedia of Food In Twenty Volumes'' is a double example; initially Gub-Gub is credited as the author, but the text admits that the book was "really" written by Tommy, based on conversations he heard between Gub-Gub and the other animals of the Dolittle household. The titular encyclopedia is described as a poorly-organized collection of scribblings written by the pig, much too long to be translated into English -- hence, according to the frontispiece, the remaining nineteen volumes of the encyclopedia have been "temporarily postponed."

* SeriesContinuityError: ''Doctor Dolittle's Circus'' is a direct midquel to ''The Story of Doctor Dolittle'' expanding on the Doctor's time exhibiting the Pushmi-Pullyu which is only briefly covered in the first book, however it has Sophie the seal directly reference the events of ''Doctor Dolittle's Post Office'' which are set long after the original book's ending. Either there was time travel involved or Lofting mixed up his chronology... or, if we accept the LiteraryAgentHypothesis explanation that all the books were in-universe written by Tommy Stubbins, it could simply be that ''Tommy'' in this case got the chronology mixed up.
** It even makes sense with the timeline, given how Tommy in ''The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle'' is very clear on how, if he ever forgets a detail while writing the books, Polynesia (who is still with him and has a great memory) will set him straight; but since both ''Doctor Dolittle's Circus'' and ''Doctor Dolittle's Post Office'' take place during a time when Polynesia wasn't with the Doctor, she wasn't present for either of the stories in question and as such couldn't help out with the details. And since the books take place before Tommy met the Doctor, he wasn't there for the events either and was already working from secondhand information when writing the books.

The character has repeatedly appeared in radio and TV and a box office bomb musical, ''Film/DoctorDolittle'' starring Creator/RexHarrison, in 1967. An animated series by Creator/DepatieFrelengEnterprises aired in 1970, with Bob Holt voicing Doctor Dolittle. The books also inspired the ''Film/DrDolittle'' series starring Creator/EddieMurphy, about a modern-day doctor with an innate gift for talking to animals. A third adaptation simply titled ''Film/{{Dolittle}}'', starring Creator/RobertDowneyJr, will be released in 2020.

* FriendlyVet: The fact that Dolittle can intelligently talk with his patients is a real help.

* SeriesContinuityError: ''Doctor Dolittle's Circus'' is a direct midquel to ''The Story of Doctor Dolittle'' expanding on the Doctor's time exhibiting the Pushmi-Pullyu which is only briefly covered in the first book, however it has Sophie the seal directly reference the events of ''Doctor Dolittle's Post Office'' which are set long after the original book's ending. Either there was time travel involved or Lofting mixed up his chronology... or, if we accept the LiteraryAgentHypothesis explanation that all the books were in-universe written by Tommy Stubbins, it could simply be that ''Tommy'' in this case got the chonology mixed up. It even makes sense with the timeline, given how Tommy in ''The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle'' is very clear on how, if he ever forgets a detail while writing the books, Polynesia (who is still with him and has a great memory) will set him straight; but since both ''Doctor Dolittle's Circus'' and ''Doctor Dolittle's Post Office'' take place during a time when Polynesia wasn't with the Doctor, she wasn't present for either of the stories in question and as such couldn't help out with the details.

* SeriesContinuityError: ''Doctor Dolittle's Circus'' is a direct midquel to ''The Story of Doctor Dolittle'' expanding on the Doctor's time exhibiting the Pushmi-Pullyu which is only briefly covered in the first book, however it has Sophie the seal directly reference the events of ''Doctor Dolittle's Post Office'' which are set long after the original book's ending. Either there was time travel involved or Lofting mixed up his chronology.

* TheArtfulDodger: Cheapside, the Londoner sparrow, somehow manages to be a sparrow version of this. While obviously not a pickpocket because sparrows don't need money, he has the same attitude, the same cheekiness and wiliness, and even the same accent.

* AbsentMindedProfessor: The Doctor to a certain extent, mainly in terms of money.

* DitzyGenius: Doctor Dolittle, though at first he comes across more of a GeniusDitz (a bit of a fool in most things, but an absolute marvel at medicine and animal languages). Later books establish him firmly as a DitzyGenius, though; he's a ''very'' intelligent man with vast knowledge on such varied topics as astronomy, zoology, history, geography and of course medicine; he's a tremendously skilled doctor and surgeon, his knack for languages (human and animal) is unparalleled, and he's also good at logical deduction as well as thinking up creaticve solutions to problems. But he's also bit of a scatterbrain who tends to get distracted when he really shouldn't be, he's absolutely terrible at managing his money or household, and he quite often demonstrates that he's rather short on common sense.

* FirstPersonPeripheralNarrator: Tommy Stubbins. An unusual example in that he is first introduced in ''The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle'', so the earlier set books are all 3rd person omniscient (though ''The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle'' hint that these books are also written by Tommy).

* IntergenerationalFriendship: Between Doctor Dolittle and Tommy Stubbins, who is ten years old when they first meet.

* NotGoodWithPeople: Doctor Dolittle can speak with animals and relates well to them, but aside from a few close friends he doesn't much like humans.

* DitzyGenius: Doctor Dolittle, though at first he comes across more of a GeniusDitz (a bit of a fool in most things, but an absolute marvel at medicine). Later books establish him firmly as a DitzyGenius, though; he's a ''very'' intelligent man with vast knowledge on such varied topics as astronomy, zoology, history, geography and of course medicine; he's a tremendously skilled doctor and surgeon, his knack for languages (human and animal) is unparalleled, and he's also good at logical deduction as well as thinking up creaticve solutions to problems. But he's also bit of a scatterbrain who tends to get distracted when he really shouldn't be, he's absolutely terrible at managing his money or household, and he quite often demonstrates that he's rather short on common sense.

* DitzyGenius: Doctor Dolittle, though at first he comes across more of a GeniusDitz (a bit of a fool in most things, but an absolute marvel at medicine). Later books establish him firmly as a DitzyGenius, though; he's a ''very'' intelligent man with vast knowledge on such varied topics as astronomy, zoology, history, geography and of course medicine; he's a tremendously skilled doctor and surgeon, and his knack for languages (human and animal) is unparalleled. But he's also bit of a scatterbrain who tends to get distracted when he really shouldn't be, he's absolutely terrible at managing his money or household, and he quite often demonstrates that he's rather short on common sense.

* GeniusDitz: Doctor Dolittle has traces of this; he's a tremendously skilled doctor and great at learning the various animal languages, but he can also be a bit of a scatterbrain and tends to get distracted when he really shouldn't be, and he's absolutely terrible at managing his money or household.

The character has repeatedly appeared in radio and TV and a box office bomb musical, ''Film/DoctorDolittle'' starring Creator/RexHarrison, in 1967. The books also inspired the ''Film/DrDolittle'' series starring Creator/EddieMurphy, about a modern-day doctor with an innate gift for talking to animals. A third adaptation simply titled ''Film/{{Dolittle}}'', starring Creator/RobertDowneyJr, will be released in 2020.