# Is "The Story of Doctor Dolittle" by Hugh Lofting a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting (Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1920) is identified by: New York: Frederick A. The census claim is confirmed and the reversal is real: although Lofting was English, the first edition is American — New York: Frederick A.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- New 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 frontispiece with its original tissue guard; inserted black-and-white plates; and numerous line illustrations, many full-page, all by Lofting
- Sources conflict on the plate count — Sotheby's and several dealers record a frontispiece plus two further plates, while other descriptions specify three inserted black-and-white plates — so plate count must not be used as a decisive point until checked against the copy in hand
- Publisher imprint reads Frederick A. Stokes Company

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Hugh Lofting |
| Publisher | Frederick A. Stokes Company |
| Year | 1920 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1920 — published 25 October 1920 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
New 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 frontispiece with its original tissue guard; inserted black-and-white plates; and numerous line illustrations, many full-page, all by Lofting. Sources conflict on the plate count — Sotheby's and several dealers record a frontispiece plus two further plates, while other descriptions specify three inserted black-and-white plates — so plate count must not be used as a decisive point until checked against the copy in hand. There is no number line and no first-edition statement: the first printing is identified by the Stokes imprint on the title page, matching 1920 dates on the title and copyright pages, and the copyright notice "Copyright, 1920, by Frederick A. Stokes Company" with no later printing statement present. Copies in the original dust jacket are seldom encountered, and surviving jackets are commonly restored.

## Is this the true first?
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 Dolittle novel; the Internet Archive record and trade listings agree); Wikipedia gives 1924, which was not corroborated by any independent source and is treated here as an outlier, so 1922 is adopted. Both the Stokes 1920 and the Cape UK first are collected. The series trap the census flags is genuine: The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (Stokes, 1922) is the Newbery Medal winner and is far more widely held, but it is the second book of the series — The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920) is the series first and the scarcer book.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
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 issues: an abebooks listing offers a 1948 Lippincott copy described as "the printed pricet Edition", and such copies are routinely mis-described on the strength of the surviving 1920 copyright date. Any Lippincott imprint rules out the 1920 Stokes first.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Story of Doctor Dolittle* by Hugh Lofting a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-story-of-doctor-dolittle
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.