Why, in old books, are dates often given with the years redacted? (2012)

Austen, Bronte, and others used this device also for names of people, places, and even regiment names (Austen). Why would they do this? To avoid accusations of inaccuracy (perhaps the author is taking liberties with historical facts for the purpose of the story), or even libel. I found this on a google answers forum:

It's also a fall-out from a literary convention of the time when many books and pamphlets were written criticising the government of the day, or important figures, by using false names. [Swift]'s Gullivers Travels is possibly the best known of the earlier ones. Since the reporting of Parliamentary discussions was banned until about 1808, it had to be reported in newspapers under false names (and Samuel Johnson first did it by reporting the activities of the people of Lilliput!). Some rather scurrilous stories were also printed which were thinly veiled parodies or criticisms of important figures.

I would also agree that with redacted dates, this would avoid tying the story to a particular time; obviously that becomes less effective as the centuries pass.

Some (cheap?) writers still do similar things. For example, in one book of a German “mass production” author, the following dialog takes place:

“Where are you from?” she asked.
“I’m from …”, and he told her the name of the city.

When I read this I was taken aback by how clumsy that sounded (in particular since this information played absolutely no role later on). And yet this style of obfuscating place names permeates all his books.

The most plausible explanation I could think of was that this should make the books seem “more intimate” because their lack of precision could place them in which ever city the reader was coming from.

The rationale is essentially the same as your conjecture that years were redacted “not to make the book seem outdated” so I would support your hypothesis.

I think this is merely a convention of fiction, which doesn't happen to be common any more. It may be, as some have suggested in comments, that it is a device that makes the work appear more like reportage.

In Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter spends several pages considering the translation of a single street name from a Russian novel (Crime and Punishment I think, but I may be misremembering). The street name is given as an initial, but he states that in this case it would have been obvious to anybody who knew St Petersburg which street it was.

If Hofstadter is right then in that case the device was used to remove specificity so the author did not commit himself to that particular street but anybody in the know would realise. But often (as with years) it does not appear to be hiding a specific year, but on the contrary suggesting to the reader that there is a specific year even though there need not be.

I've seen this convention in many science fiction stories set in the (author's) future, and I always assumed it was done for two reasons to avoid pinning the author down on when some technology might be invented or some historical trend take place, and to allow a story to seem imminent without quickly being dated. Like if you write, "When the first expedition landed on Mars in 2043...", that might sound like a plausible date for someone living in 2011. But by the time 2043 actually rolls around, if no one has yet been to Mars it will definitely sound strange to the reader. So a vague "in the 21st century" or "in 20--" lets the author weasel out. Likewise, many stories are intended to be set "sometime in the next few years". But if the author actually gives a year, like writing in 2011 he says in 2014, then in just a few years his book will be dated.

I've seen movies where the action bounces between the past and the present where they'll throw up subtitles that say "New York, 1942" and "Boston, present day" rather than giving an exact year. I've always assumed they did this to avoid dating the movie to quickly. Of course if the movie was made in 1960, someone watching it today will quickly see that technology, clothing styles, etc. are not HIS "present day". So the device doesn't prevent a movie from being dated indefinitely. But it can buy you a decade or so.

It was an attempt to make it look as if the letter was somewhat anonymized, suggesting the letter was an actual letter and that the book is in fact an account of real events.

Indeed, if the author makes an attempt to conceal part of the data, supposedly to protect the privacy of the people involved, it makes them more real in the reader's mind.

This is the opposite of the traditional warning "The characters in this ... are purely fictional and any similarity with real..." (which typically means that the characters are in fact very much real and might sue the author).

Another reason is to prevent people from tracking accurately the sequence of events and thereby avoid potential inconsistencies. For instance, if 50 pages later on you get a newspaper clipping dated December 9th, 1798 you will be unable to ascertain if the events reported occurred a couple days before the letter or years later. By not giving precise dates, the author keeps the reader from guessing too much of the plot ahead of time.

Omitting the profanity is almost certainly Victorian modesty^{[citation-needed]}.

Omitting the year is most likely a mechanism to not tie the story to a particular year^{[citation-needed]}. One sees something similar in some movies that declare the time frame to be "Present Day" or "Near Future".

I've noticed the same happen with names, especially with an elevated title. My feeling was that this was to preserved modesty, or to avoid embarrassment, while appearing to be based in the real world. I guess that the style of writing is reporting.

Having read your question, and being reminded of seeing dates, erm, covered, it's possible that the author has the opposite concern- that the text will be read as fact, and the author needs to conceal information to remove it from reality.

Any thoughts?