Anonymity? The actual town doesn't matter, just what happens there.

I think it's just because they don't like the idea of either using a real place, or making up a name. So the characters' letters are "redacted for privacy", removing some place names and some people's names too, as though they were actually written by the characters and published.

Lol, I mean you could say that about almost every detail of a story. The whole thing could be dashes except for the bare bones events at the core. Why single out specific place names? It raises more questions than it answers

Sometimes its to avoid getting sued or cause a scandal by associating a place with a certain book, and other times its because it stops the immersion from being broken by someone like, "On page 335 you state the monster travels to Dublin, and that he travelled 10 km on hollyhill road. In actuality Hollyhill Road didn't exist until 1922 and is less than a kilometer in length. Are we supposed to believe the monster can bend both time and space?"

That's a good question that I don't know the answer to, except that I know it was pretty common in nineteenth century lit.

This convention is also sometimes used for people's names. I can't think of exact examples, but it occurs well into the 20th century, like 50s, 60s.

As Chaoticidealism said, it's just a thing to indicate that the information isn't important - it could've been any town in ireland, the minor character is any Smith or Jones. I think books went away from this as there was an ambition toward realism with an increase in detail and specificity.

If you're writing a story set in your area and you want your readers to feel like they can really relate, then you want to be both vague and detailed. You want your readers to be thinking, "Ooh, I know where this is!" (even though they're wrong because you are making it up) and also, "God, I know someone exactly like that! I wonder if the author actually knows them and used them as inspiration for the character?"

It grounds a story in reality without making it so specific that readers lose that feeling of connection. A lot of English classics are written in this way, meant to feel familiar and relatable without involving any real-life people or places or causing the inhabitants of those places to feel maligned or made fun of. Especially when the setting is some small town or village where everyone really knows each other - you can't go around turning your neighbors into fictional idiots and cheaters and criminals. But you can imply that there are idiots, cheaters, and criminals in a small village...just a few miles away or in the next county or over there in Sussex/Yorkshire/Wales/etc. and all the readers will nod their heads and think, "Ha! Nice try but I know you are describing Lady B---ton and her ridiculous son, Lord J--r B---ton! They are a menace! W--shire is just chock full of reprobates and rogues!"

It's all so deliciously gossipy and scandalous! (without actually slandering real people)

Ooo I know!

Ironically it was commonplace in literature to create a sense of realism in fiction. The authors would “redact” these names and places giving the reader the impression that the author wanted to protect certain privacies leaving the reader not knowing if the work was real or not. So Frankenstein was that much more terrifying

The more I learned about them the more I came to love them.

It was literary fad at the time. It's done in plenty of other books of the period, like in much of Dostoevsky and some books by Victor Hugo. (Les Misérables is a notable example that comes to mind.)

The idea is to mimic how something would be presented if it were actually true, as specific identifying information like cities and stuff would be censored. You can think of it as being in the same vein as "found footage" films (like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Paranormal"). It would have served to help readers of the time suspend disbelief, as they would be familiar with actual true accounts where information was censored in this way. It doesn't really serve its purpose for a modern reader, which is why some translations substitute in the name of the city the author meant in lieu of the dashes.

I read somewhere that it was supposed to denote works of fiction. It was just the en vouge style to write stories set in the present world about fictional events.

"--up----chimney----out---window------he-----murdered----by----orangutan-----."

10/10, genre defining.

I can't speak for Frankenstein, but in Russian lit, having something happen in a town specifically called 'N' (or some variant) is such a trope that it's not even weird

An entirely different and lesser level, I know, but I used to make mission packs for a somewhat popular game and I’d often blank out (or usually write “redacted “) the place names.

One major reason was that the maps didn’t actually fit the area I was trying to represent. I just used existing maps and pretended they were somewhere else.

The other was that I kept basic historical facts accurate to the timeline (types of aircraft, the general flow of the battle, etc) but took creative liberty with the details, so it was helpful being able to fudge stuff. I rationalized it by saying that people undergoing the experience wouldn’t necessarily know the significance of the time and place. e.g. a soldier going to Stalingrad as the battle started wouldn’t have known it was going to be so incredibly horrendous (well, they probably could have guessed).

[deleted]

Is that Murders in the [BLANKED OUT PLACE NAME]?

It's also more common in older novels, so I wonder if it is a vestige of the novel working itself out as a distinct art form. Early experiments with the novel played around with ways to suggest this all really happened - epistolary novels are an example of this as is the framing of both Frankenstein and The Scarlet Letter (found this old box of papers in the attic of the custom house, you'll never believe what they said!).

Today we see new forms of storytelling emerging, and you see folks experimenting to find what works. I'm thinking about how the Lizzie Bennet Diaries mimics a blogger talking directly to the camera, while later episodes and projects begin to have the camera "accidentally" catch & post moments.

>'Worst. Novel. Ever.'

Reminds me of SCP stuff

I think for some books, it's because the author is acting like he is trying to keep things private because he doesn't want the science to become public knowledge.

It is supposed to be a journal.

That's the Dostoevsky Dash! https://bookriot.com/the-dostoevsky-dash/

Jane Eyre does that, too. It was a stylistic choice to make it look like certain places and people are “redacted” from the record as if they were real letters and documents to protect people’s privacy

SCP moment

Handmaids Tale

Kay now explain it for House of Leaves

So its versimilitude? Frankenstein is framed as a series of letters so I guess that kinda makes sense, it just seems like the choice is so arbitrary, because its not like any character names, or even other place names are redacted.

In some books this is done in order to give the story more versatility, such story could take place anywhere and at any time

Great question OP! I’ve always wondered that too and now I know. Thanks guys!

Yeah, it’s to make them seem realistic. It’s kind of a weird choice. I don’t think a book like Dracula, which is all letters and articles, uses this technique at all.

No, by the time Dracula was written (about 70-80 years after Frankenstein) it had gone out of fashion in both novels and letter writing. I'm not 100% sure when it faded out of style, but it was a common trend that lasted at least until mid-way through the 1800's (for example, it was also done in the American book Uncle Tom's Cabin)

I think House of Leaves is very much a modern example of this form of writing (and every other work in that genre) Right? HOL is a compilation of various notes and sketches of a persons experience in a house that appears to be haunted. It’s supposed to leave us the reader curious if what is being read real.

I remember being confused by this in Black Beauty, and I decided as a kid that it was because Beauty was bad at spelling...

haha too good.

I’ve noticed this with dates as well, sometimes a letter in a book will have something like ‘3rd May 18–‘ written at the top

Yes! It was explained to me when I studied "the novel" as part of my English Lit degree. When the novel first emerged, they were seen as frivolous because they were fictional (and also because they were popular with women). A lot of authors tried to get around that by framing them as epistolary, retellings of stories they heard from a friend of a friend of a... or cautionary tales.

It's one of my favourite little known facts!

Sometimes when a person's name was blanked out it's to imply that they are some significant figure or aristocrat and the implication is that it would be "scandalous" if this story were known about them or associated with them. Adds to the mood.

The newly literate female reader is also why so many early novels are moralistic in nature. Richardson couldn't help but jump at the chance to warn women against... well, having a thought of their own.

Hah. So House of Leaves is basically the logical conclusion of the Scarlet Letter?

That's right! Jane Austen did that, too. I guess it made the gossip in Emma that much juicier.

Indeed it did

Let me ask you a question: why would a gentleman whose cigarillo case is inscribed "Genius at Work" spend all his time reading a frivolous work of prose fiction?

Ok, now I need to read House of Leaves.

Its wild. A manuscript of a indepth analysis of movie no one has seen or heard of is found by some guy who assembles it together and intersperse journal like entries of their life throughout footnotes. Oh and the manuscript was written by a blind man.

It’s to make it seem real. It was standard in the era of classic novels. But when I see it done by new hip contemporary authors, I find it pretentious, and it takes me out of the story.

Once they start thinkin, well by God they're going to want rights

Whose going to want rights?

Why were true accounts at the time censored?

Edit- I still don't get why a city name would be withheld. Names, addresses, etc. sure those make sense. Are the place names in fiction imitating place names in true accounts being censored? Were other kinds of information censored in true accounts instead? What kind of things are the true accounts, like newspaper articles or something else like an autobiography?

It’s to protect privacy at the time. The same way certain court cases don’t reveal names

It's just like when faces are censored in today's media, or a reporter doesn't give sources' names. It's identifying information.

Absolutely! Interestingly, there are many female novelists prior to Richardson (Eliza Haywood is perhaps the best known example ) who wrote much racier, less “moral” work, which was very popular with readers of all genders. Richardson is reacting to an already well-established genre of “romances.”

...I withdraw my question. (sips laudanum in defeat)

---

One of my favorite reading experiences. Worth experiencing for sure!

Technically the manuscript was dictated by a blind man. And the guy writing the footnotes gradually goes insane as the narrative goes on

SPC risks

Fairly sure that Dostoyevsky used it to avoid avoid government censorship as well as the reasons outlined above.

Huh... I'm reading the comments it seems it was stylistic, I kind of just thought they couldn't be bothered to find out the city names

If true, that would be fascinating, especially considering how many of his contemporaries started doing it just stylistically - rather than for functional political reasons. Someone else here mentioned that it is sometimes called the "Dostoyevsky Dash" suggesting maybe he started it.

> It was literary fad at the time.

Dare I say, a meme

>Dostoevsky

I was gonna say, this was the first time I ran into it and was completely bamboozled every time we went down ________ street

[deleted]

This is true of Dangerous Liaisons which I’m reading now.

New people copy old people, sometimes for different reasons

The current book series John Dies at the End does this. It purports itself to be set in our reality, in contemporary time, and so the main narrator consistently refers to the town they live in as "Undisclosed" to stop people from coming to the "most haunted town in the US" as tourists after reading the books.

Black Beauty also does this - had me so confused as a child (BB was one of my favourite books that I re-read numerous times), but I must say, I guess it had the desired effect, as I kind of thought it must be so that I wouldn't know which estate BB and Ginger were on and be able to go there!

It is strange when you first encounter it. But read enough from that time period and you come to accept it as a bizarre eccentricity of the period.

I think character names weren't redacted because it was (& is) pretty difficult to identify somebody with just their name. You need a location to go along with it, at the very least, unless we are speaking of the royalty I suppose

I haven't read Frankenstein in a long time, so I don't know if it's the same there, but in Austen's novels I feel place names are "redacted" when they're associated with negative things and left in place when they're associated with positive things. Kinda like how our newspapers would go "Florida Man threw an alligator at his girlfriend" vs "Steve Irwin, the famous Australian wildlife educator, and his wife Terri spent their honeymoon trapping crocodiles in the wild".

So in Pride and Prejudice, we know Mr. Darcy is from Pemberly, Derbyshire and Pemberly is near the town of Lambton. That's basically pin pointing his identity - but that's okay because he has nothing to be ashamed of/to hide so his identity need not be protected. On the other hand, Wickham's regiment is always _Shire - because he is is a scoundrel and thus his identity needs to be protected/censored.

I remember first seeing this in Edgar Allan Poe's novels. Not just places, but people names and exact years, too.

These types of novels are called epistolary novels, they are written as a series of letters between people.

The book "Dangerous liaisons" also does this. It even comes with a foreword from the author stating that the following letters are real conversations between french nobles, so that he had to redact some names and exclude some of the more explicit letters.

I noticed this in War and Peace as well, when I tried reading it as a kid. It made the comprehension that much more difficult since people were also introduced that way, like the Archduke of D_______ (if memory serves).

I would add to the other explanations here that it was partly an imitation of a convention of pamphlets produced by satirical writers who would circulate gossip in a literary format.

Not exactly gossip as we would associate it now with magazines and tabloid journalism; highly regarded writers (then, as now) such as Dryden and Pope would write about a character whose name was Lady ------- or Mr -------- and the reader would be expected to fill it in from their knowledge of current events or the whispers of other readers.

I think the intention on the part of writers such as Austen or Mary Shelley, who weren't setting up as satirists, was to imply a sort of knowing reference and emphasise the contemporaneity of their story.

It also saved them from having to specifically mention a town (or as in one case in Austen, a specific military regiment) so that those belonging to it would have no cause to say "Excuse me! that sort of thing doesn't go on in my town/regiment etc" or, possbly more embarrassingly "you are obviously writing about me/Mr George Barker of that town/regiment but just changed the name"

Gdpr

This is the 19th century equivalent of shooting your movie on a phone so that the footage seems "real". In movies it makes the depicted events seem more immediate and genuine, because "obviously no one was paid to film this." The effect that 19th century authors want to create is like, "it must be true, otherwise he wouldn't care about implying that this apparently totally real lady might be a whore who writes letters to men without parental supervision."

I always wondered this about names in older novels as well. Like you'll see a character referred to as "Mr. M----". Same thing?

Like rain on yer wedding day.

Yeah I’ve heard it labelled the Dostoyevsky dash as well, only recently though funnily enough.

That is interesting now you mention it - that’s my lunch time reading for tomorrow then!

Another excellent modern example

Same thing

You're overestimating the size of the places being hidden: at this point, first name and town might well be enough to allow people to identify your address, and certainly town plus whatever other information was in the thing being censored would be.

Thanks that makes sense

"Should I marry S.? Not if she won't tell me the rest of the letters in her name" - Woody Allen

There are also character names redacted like Prince ______ in The Idiot.

I was taught by my Literature professors that Russian novelists did it, at least in part, to make their books more timeless, as location names were known to change depending on who was ruling. Street names, buildings, etc would change also depending on if they were named after someone and how that person was perceived at the time...a well-known example would be St Petersburg, which was Petrograd and then Leningrad, then back to St Petersburg. Only on a pettier level of changing names...(I mean, I think there are probably multiple explanations. This is just one.)

I never did find out where in the world “Major ___ de Coverley” was supposed to be.

Ha ha, this is hilarious. You thought it was a smudge.

I always wondered how you were supposed to read this in your head. Do you say Mr. M? ("Mr. Em") or can you make up a name, like Mr. Montrose...

i'm learning quite a bit from these comments though!

I always say "Mr M" in my head.

Ohhh I wonder if that's common in other literature as well! I recently finished a book by a Korean author and another by a Japanese author and both of them would use XX when referring to streets and apartment numbers. I just assumed they didn't feel like creating a fake one, but it would make a lot more sense if those were redacted for the sake of privacy.

Interesting!! the first time i came across this was in middle school when i was reading Les Miserables. I never could figure out why the name of the town was Le _____

I think I do too. And I think that's what audiobooks do as well. I was just wonderin'!

One of my favorite novels is Wells' "The Time Machine." I love how he redacted the main character's name so that it would seem like a true story. I know it's been used everywhere, but this was my favorite usage in particular.

I just read The Color Purple, which is epistolary and also redacts a person’s name like this. I wonder if Alice Walker was deliberately mimicking early novels (maybe as a statement about the newness of the black voice in literature?).

Hope someone got fired for that blunder!

Hah yes

I just finished Crime and Punishment, and I wondered! Thanks!!