2 Hugh Lofting first editions are documented on this shelf, from The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920) to The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (1922) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Hugh Lofting title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Hugh Lofting copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

The Story of Doctor Dolittle — 1920 · Frederick A. Stokes CompanyNew York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1920 — published 25 October 1920. Octavo (approx. 203 x 134 mm), collating [xii], 180 pp. (one dealer census gives x, [2], 180). Bound in publisher's orange cloth, the front cover decoratively stamped and lettered in blue with a duplicate of the colour frontispiece laid on as a pictorial paste-on, spine lettered in blue; three-colour pictorial endpapers; inserted colour…. The census claim is confirmed and the reversal is real: although Lofting was English, the first edition is American — New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 25 October 1920 — and it precedes the first English edition, London: Jonathan Cape, by roughly two years. The Cape UK first is dated 1922 by dealer and library records (John Atkinson Books describes a 1922 Cape first edition, first printing of the inaugural…. No 1920 book-club edition is documented. The reprint traps are Stokes's own later printings from the same plates, which retain the 1920 copyright notice — since the first carries no printing statement either, absence of a statement alone is not sufficient and the orange cloth, blue blocking, laid-on colour paste-on and three-colour pictorial endpapers must also agree. The second trap is the later Lippincott….
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle — 1922 · Frederick A. Stokes CompanyFirst printing August 1922. The copyright page carries no later-printing statement; later printings add a stated line (for example a Fifth Printing is noted as August 1923). Bound in grey boards with a color pictorial paste-on label and blue-and-yellow pictorial endpapers showing Dolittle as king of the island. Color frontispiece with captioned tissue guard, one color plate, and the author's black-and-white…. US true first (Stokes, New York). Lofting, though English, was published in the United States first; the Jonathan Cape London edition followed. Later Stokes and successor Lippincott printings carry stated printing notices. A later second-issue dust jacket adds review blurbs and Lofting-title advertisements on the panels; the first-issue jacket lacks these. Modern reprints expurgate racial content.

More Children's & YA shelves: J. K. Rowling, J. M. Barrie, Jacqueline Woodson, Jeff Kinney, Jerry Spinelli, Joseph Krumgold.

← All authors · All genres · part of the First-Edition Identification resource.