Gdpr

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"

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).

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

New people copy old people, sometimes for different reasons

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

[deleted]

>Dostoevsky

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

> It was literary fad at the time.

Dare I say, a meme

I display my worn books. I love buy a new pristine book but I’ve never been too bothered with keeping it that way.

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.

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

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

SPC risks

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

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

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

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.”

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