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.

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

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.

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?"

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

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.

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

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)

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

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.

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.

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

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!

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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!

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

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).

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."

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.

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

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).

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

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.

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

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

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.