THE STORY OF DOCTOR DOLITTLE. [PUFFIN BOOKS,PS289]: BEING THE HISTORY OF HIS PECULIAR LIFE AT HOME AND ASTOUNDING ADVENTURES IN FOREIGN PARTS AND NEVER BEFORE PRINTED.

UK,slim 12mo p/back,1st edn. [Editor Kaye Webb was the second after Eleanor Graham,in 1961.In a decade the Puffin list grew from just 51 titles when she took over,to 1,213 in print by 1969.Puffin obtained the paperback rights to many of the best writers of the time,including all-time classics including 'Mary Poppin','Dr Dolittle' and 'The Hobbit' and originals such as 'Stig of the Dump' by Clive King.Titles were promoted with flair through the Puffin Club,started by Kaye Webb in 1967,with the promise to Allen Lane that "It will make children into book readers".But by 1987,it had become uneconomical and its quarterly magazine 'Puffin Post' appeared quarterly for many years,resuming publication in January 2009. Webb continued as editor until 1979.] VG.No owner inscrptn and no price removal from card cover.Bright,clean, glossy,colour pictorial artwork illustrated covers with black+red letters to both,b/w Puffin logo and lettered spine/backstrip with black number PS289 and no reading creases to same.Negligible shelf-wear, bumping,creasing to edges and corners - a tiny nick at foot of spine and to same vicinity a small wrinkle due to drying/shrinkage of glueing process used in the binding,and front top corner with dog-ear crease and a further but longer diagonal crease just below it,and across the body of the front cover,other corners unaffected.Front cover also with a couple of small pin-point size indents (not pin-pricks and without penetration) and a couple of small penny-sized (1p) circular indents too.Top+fore-edges aged/toned - as usual/normal; contents bright,tight,clean,solid and sound - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corner tips,unread part from my own collation.UK,slim 12mo p/back,1st edn,11-253pp [paginated] includes 21 chapters each with b/w illustrated decoration of capitalised initial of start of each sentence of each chapter,6 full-page and several part-page b/w author's illustrations interspersed throughout the text and the book; plus [unpaginated] blank,half-title,b/w Lofting illustrated title page,a dedication,a contents list/table with a b/w illustration of a little town called Puddleby-on-the-Marsh to its reverse,and to the rear Cape's list of Dr Dolittle titles with note on author to its reverse,a Puffin logo'ed separator page advert with the following and last two pages of publisher's advert for 4 other Puffin titles.
Described hard but fairly and honestly - it is only the exteriors with minor faults - nowhere as detracting as it reads or would look.
The first Dr Dolittle stories were written in the French trenches during the First World War.Hugh Lofting sent them as illustrated letters to two children instead of telling them about bursting shells and muddy dugouts he wrote about such fascinating characters as DaboDab the duck,Gub-Gub the pig and Polynesia the altogether too knowing parrot.After the war they were made into a book which the critic Hugh Walpole described as 'a work of genius'.Now,forty-five years later (then1967),Dr Dolittle is still as funny and important for hundreds of children and their parents and a film has been made about him.
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