[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".

[2][3] The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts Never Before Printed (1920) begins the series.

The character entered public domain in the 1990s, which allowed for the legal creation of derivative works based on it without the need to acquire permission from the Lofting estate, which was required previously.

[4][5][6] For example, in April 2021, the Japanese biologist Shinichi Fukuoka created a new story Dr. Dolittle Saves Galápagos Islands which appeared in The Asahi Shimbun.

[16] Furthermore, in the narrative sequence that stretches from the end of the first book, through Circus and Caravan, to Green Canary, there's no gap into which Post Office could be inserted.