Doctor Dolittle and the Green Canary was published posthumously by J.B. Lippincott in 1950, three years after Lofting’s death. The book had been largely completed during Lofting’s lifetime and was edited for publication by his widow Josephine. It returns to the frame-story format of Doctor Dolittle’s Zoo, with Pippinella, a green canary, narrating her life story to the Doctor.
Pippinella’s story takes her through a succession of human households — she is bought and sold, given away and stolen, passed from hand to hand through different social classes. Each household gives her a different perspective on human life: she observes poverty and wealth, kindness and cruelty, love and indifference, all from the unique vantage point of a cage in the corner of the room. Her owners include a window cleaner, an opera singer, a duke, and a criminal, and each episode provides both adventure and social observation.
The narrative conceit — a bird’s-eye view of human society, literally — gives Lofting the opportunity to comment on human behavior from the outside, seeing what humans take for granted as strange and often absurd. Pippinella’s perspective is not moralistic but observational: she simply describes what she sees, and the comedy and tragedy of human life emerge from the description without editorial comment.
Collecting Doctor Dolittle and the Green Canary
First edition (J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1950): Cloth binding, illustrations by Lofting. Posthumous publication.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $50–$150
- Without jacket: $10–$30