Where The Hell Is Springfield / Literature

• In The Name Of This Book Is Secret, the narrator specifically says that he cannot reveal where the story is set (or even the real names of the characters) because it is too dangerous. The book is just as strange as it sounds.
• Discworld: One of the very early books has an author's foreword reading "This book contains no maps. If this disturbs or offends you, feel free to go and draw one of your own."
• Don Quixote: Invoked in the very first line: "In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to recall…" Scholars have deduced that the village is Argamasilla de Alba, where author Miguel de Cervantes was imprisoned for a time (and where he began to write the novel) – no surprise he had no desire to recall the place. The last chapter suggests that In-Universe, not revealing Don Quixote's hometown would allow all the villages of La Mancha to compete for the right to be hometown.
• In the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, the city and state where Greg Heffley and his family live in is never revealed, although most clues point to it being somewhere on the upper east coast, most likely in either New York or Massachusetts.
• Animorphs is up-front with the characters saying that they "can't let you know who we are, or where we live." The last book does say that they live in California, somewhere around Santa Barbara, but there are earlier hints as to that location, such as the region’s geography and the conveniently nearby zoo/theme park "The Gardens".
• A Hole in the Fence is set somewhere in rural France. However, the exact location of Courquetaines and Metropolis is never stated. Although a commune named Courquetaine is located in north-central France, there is no city called Metropolis situated within walking distance from that village...or anywhere in France, for that matter. Further complicating matters, a 2014 law (passed forty years after the book's publication) allows any group of communes to become a larger administrative division called a métropole.
• The Saga of Darren Shan, as well as the Demonata, never reveal the name of their town, city, or country. Darren's school in the first book is based on one near the author’s home in Limerick, Ireland. It feels very Irish in general, too. Lord Loss and a few of the sequels take place in Carcery Vale.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events is unclear on the orphans' location, hometown, country, or time period during any of the books. There are vague "hints" at being set in the U.S., the author's home country.
• Lampshaded in Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Days; early in the book, the narrator explains that a surveyor’s error caused the entirety of Mist County, the town’s location, not to appear on any maps of Minnesota.
• John Dies at the End is set in the town of "Undisclosed", with the only information ever given about it being that it's somewhere in the American Midwest. Before the book was published, the town was Rockville, but fans took this to mean it was set in the real town of Rockford, Illinois, so it had to be changed. The Alternate Reality Game on the website suggests that it's Cairo, IL, based on photos of the town and multiple references to the Egyptian city of the same name.
• Les Voyageurs Sans Souci: Saint-Isidore is said to be located in the southwest of France, but the exact location is unclear. There is actually a French town called Saint-Isidore, but it is located in southeastern France.
• Most of Charles de Lint's stories are set in the city of Newford, whose location has never been stated. It's not even clear if it's in Canada or the United States, although the author does live in Ontario.
• Without Blood by Alessandro Baricco includes a note at the beginning stating that the location was intentionally vague so as to universalize the story. Spanish character names are used "due to their music" and do not indicate a Spanish setting.
• Huge by James W. Fuerst would seem, according to careful examination of Huge's descriptions in the story, to be set in Eatontown, New Jersey. However, while some aspects of the book’s geography match up with Eatontown (the location of the mall and the Circle, the town's proximity to the Garden State Parkway), the author has obviously taken care to scramble other aspects and make the setting more generic. The proof is in the location of the reservoir relative to the mall; it just doesn't work in real life.
• The main action in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in the original U.K. edition, seems to be set somewhere in Britain (probably London), but it's otherwise ambiguous. Cultural Translation has Charlie finding a dollar in the snow in the American edition, rather than the 50p of the UK edition. And then the sequel, which was published in the U.S. first, explicitly puts the action in the United States. Both film adaptations intentionally make the setting a bizarre mishmash of both.
• Erin Hunter:
  • The first series of Warrior Cats was set in a forest based off of New Forest in southern England, but in the second series, the Clans moved to an entirely fictional new forest and have encountered some wildlife that can't be found in the UK, making it pretty hard to determine where the series is set. Even the authors aren't sure. One explanation that's been given is that it takes place fictional island inbetween Britain and North America.
  • It's never mentioned where Survivor Dogs takes place. However the existence of coyotes, grizzlies, otters, and gray foxes implies it's in North America, and the confirmation that some of the characters are mixed with breeds such as coonhounds further implies the US. It's also near an ocean.
  • It isn't mentioned where the titular Bravelands in Bravelands is set. Judging from the wildlife it's somewhere in southern Africa.
• M. T. Anderson's Feed (2002) is set somewhere in America, but apart from that the only clues are that it is not too far from the ocean. The problem with pinning down location is that the book is set in the future, so the modern indications don't quite fit.
• Encyclopedia Brown lives in Idaville, USA, with a fair amount of Geographic Flexibility. Some hints suggest that it’s in the Southeast, and an Onion story spoofing the books put it in Florida. One story mentions that the Skunk Ape is “Idaville's version of Bigfoot,” further suggesting Florida and the Southeast. In another, thieves hid stolen fishing rods among the mangrove trees. Nearly all mangroves in the USA grow in Florida.
• After Sinclair Lewis released Main Street, some people were mad at him for using the real town of Sauk Center, Minnesota. For every subsequent book he wrote, he used the fictional state of Winnemac, with its biggest city Zenith and a smaller town named (in quite a coincidence) Springfield.
• Wicked Lovely is often presumed to be in Pennsylvania, but it is never actually stated where Huntsdale is, although it's clearly American. Melissa Marr stated that this was intentional in an interview, wanting it to be a kind of Everytown, America. Leslie hopping on a train to Pittsburgh in Ink Exchange does give it a bit of a radius.
• All the King's Men is set in a state that is never named and about which little is said except that it’s in the Deep South. However, given that it is very loosely based on the career of Huey Long, a governor of Louisiana in the 1930s, to say nothing of other clues, it's not too much of a long shot to just say that it's set there.
• The "Conni" series of books, written by Julia Boehme, is set in a town called Neustadt (meaning "New Town"). There are 26 Neustadts in Germany itself, nine more in other European countries, and one in Ontario, Canada.
• The Cat Who... Series: The majority of the series takes place in Moose County, which is described as being "four hundred miles north of everywhere". It’s definitely in the United States (a minor subplot in The Cat Who Played Post Office involves an outdated American flag on display) and is probably somewhere in the vicinity of the Great Lakes. That's all that has ever been explained about where it is — the books never even mention which state it's in.
  • While the first four books are suggested to take place in some major city, we never learn which one. Rather unusually for newspapers, neither the paper Qwill works for (The Daily Fluxion) nor its rival (The Morning Rampage) include the name of the city. The Cat Who Played Post Office confirms it and Moose County are in the same state though.
    • A now-defunct fan forum once speculated that the city in the first few books is likely Detroit, but a brief mention of Michigan as a different location in The Cat Who Could Read Backwards would seem to refute this theory (while in the same book, Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh are similarly ruled out). Additionally, one character is mentioned to be traveling through Pittsburgh while driving to New York, indicating that the unnamed city must be further west.
    • In The Cat Who Turned On and Off, a character travels by plane to Cleveland, thus also ruling it out as the setting.
    • A mention of a character hiding out in Duluth (implying that it's a nearby "big place" into which one could disappear), plus the similar weather and proximity to the Great Lakes, could indicate northern Minnesota as Moose County's location.
• Keys to the Kingdom takes this to such ridiculous extremes that all we know about the protagonist, Arthur, is that he lives on Earth. The author put in the effort to make sure his country, town, and even school remain nameless.
• In The Hunger Games, the exact locations of the Districts and the Capitol are never made clear. There are some geographical clues, as well as the industries each area is known for, but nothing specific. We know only that District 12 is in Appalachia and the Capitol is in the Rocky Mountains somewhere.
• In the endless Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys stories, they've always had trouble pinning down their hometowns:
  • Nancy's hometown of River Heights was originally placed in Iowa, but in the following years, it drifted as far east as New Jersey. In the most recent series, it's implied to be in Illinois, within driving distance of Chicago.
  • The Hardy Boys’ home of Bayport was a little better. It was always implied to be a coastal town, but that didn't stop it from drifting up and down the East Coast. Similar to River Heights, though, in more recent years, they keep it in the New York/New Jersey area to keep it within driving distance of New York City.
• The novel series of Sandokan has a strange example that borders in real life. Author Emilio Salgari tried to base every location on a real place, but sometimes the maps he used were inaccurate or based on conjecture. Sandokan's base on the island of Mompracem is based on an island on an old map that can't be found on modern maps; although Keraman is a good candidate for its location, it's mentioned in the books as a completely separate island. At least one location was a lake that was only theorized to exist, only discovered not to be there after Salgari's death, and then dug up by The British Empire years later.
• New Mayhem and Midnight in the Den of Shadows series. New Mayhem is probably somewhere around Concord, Massachusetts, but Nathaniel drugged Turquoise and Ravyn specifically so that they (and we) wouldn't know where Midnight was.
• In The Supernaturalist, it’s very unclear where Satellite City is. The story is set entirely within the city, and very little reference is made to the outside world. And since conventional nation-states no longer exist in the book's setting, the city is inhabited by people of every conceivable ethnicity and background, although the currency is apparently dinars.
• Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell's Barnaby Grimes series is set in an unnamed city that seems to be a mix of various 19th Century European cities, mostly Victorian London. Apart from being on a coast, it’s impossible to say where it is, and the few mentions of other places in the world are all fictional locations.
• H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories intentionally avert this to help build up the sense that his horrors are very real and out there somewhere. He gives precise latitude and longitude for R'lyeh in "The Call of Cthulhu", mentions real Vermont towns and faithfully recreates the local environs in "The Whisperer in Darkness", and he often goes over travel plans in minute detail to recreate the protagonist's sense of discovery in the reader. Lovecraft Country flirts with this trope but is usually set firmly in New England — Lovecraft basically created a new river valley in Massachusetts to house Arkham, Dunwich, and any other usefully horrid little towns. Lovecraft himself lived in Providence, Rhode Island, so many fans choose to accept the stories are set somewhere around there.
• In Harry Potter, the exact location of Hogwarts is never stated, and the school is stated to be under a spell that makes it impossible to put on a map. Most fans have placed its location in Scotland—it's the only place in mainland Britain that would take all day to get to by train from London, and Muggles in Scottish towns see Harry and Ron flying a car to Hogwarts—but beyond that, its exact location in Scotland is unknown. Some fans have gone with the previous statement that it's under a spell that makes it impossible to be placed on a map.
  • Diagon Alley, The Ministry of Magic, Grimauld Place, and St. Mungo's are all located in London. The Leaky Cauldron is somewhere on Charing Cross Road, actually predating it. The films identified Grimauld Place as being in the London Borough of Islington and ancillary media places the Ministry underneath Whitehall.
  • Privet Drive and Little Whinging are placed somewhere in Surrey. It's also possible, that it was an area of Surrey incorporated into Greater London in 1963, retaining the Surrey postmark.
  • A number of locations are placed around the West Country which has a heavy concentration of Wizarding families. Ottery St Catchpole is placed in Devon and Tinworth is in Cornwall. Godric's Hollow is not given a precise location but is speculated to be in a rural area of either Devon or Cornwall near the Bristol Channel.
  • Little Hangleton is stated to be 200 miles from Little Whinging, putting it somewhere in the middle of England.
• In The Genesis of Jenny Everywhere, Levendale City (where this version of Jenny lives) deliberately falls under this trope, despite clearly being in England and possibly the author's home region. It’s a joke on the fact there are several places or geographical features with the name “Leven” the author is familiar with, including a not-very important river that's a tributary of the Tees, and it plays on the idea that like Jenny, it exists “everywhere”.
• In The Mysterious Benedict Society books, the fictional Stonetown Harbor is indicated to be in the United States on the Atlantic Ocean. It's also somewhere reasonably north enough that snow is normally expected in the winter. Other than that, though, the details of the exact location are left vague.
• Czech author Jaroslav Foglar’s YA adventure books are generally set in Czech “Springfields”, including his most famous protagonists’ town quarter of Druhá Strana and the neighbouring mysterious town quarter of Stínadla in the Stínadla trilogy of books. The latter is supposedly based on Prague’s Old Town, as Foglar was from Prague, but of course many other Czech places have mysterious old towns with serpentine alleys, and Foglar insisted that its location has to be kept secret for it to keep its mystique.
• The Bailey School Kids series is set in a place called Bailey City in an unclear location. A relatively early book describes the local Red River as flowing into the Atlantic Ocean and that the original settlement on the river’s banks was close enough to the Atlantic for the city founders to worry about pirates. But in a later book, a Wild West ghost town is only a bus ride away.
• Most of Stephen King’s stories are set in fictional cities Maine or in actual places King lived (Florida and Colorado in particular). The Running Man, however, is set in the fictional town of Harding, which is somewhere in the Midwest.
• The Handmaid's Tale: The story is set in an unnamed American city, but certain clues point to it being in Cambridge, Massachussetts. Specifically Harvard Square. Margaret Atwood stated in the foreword for the TV show's tie-in edition that this is a Call-Back to colonial-era Puritanism.
• Oddly averted in Moominpappa at Sea, where a map of the lighthouse island gives its exact latitude and longitude and helpfully adds that this is in the Gulf of Finland. Of course, that just raises questions about where Moominvalley itself is by implying that it's connected to places recognisable in our world. At other times, it's clearly shown to be in some imagined world of its own. (The mountains rule out Finland, for one thing.) Then again, the Moomins have also visited places in our world, like the Riviera — or at least their world's counterparts of them. Who knows.
• Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Alexandria could take place in Britain due to characters using "Mum" (instead of "Mom"), Cicero having lived in a London bookstore in the past, and Professor Chin working at a British museum. At the same time, it contains raccoons (which do exist in Europe, but not Britain) and characters call chips "french fries".
• Based on the wildlife, we can conclude Quest for Fire is set in Eurasia but the exact geographical location is hard to pinpoint beyond that. It's far north enough for woolly mammoths, south enough for crocodiles, west enough for roe deer and east enough for tigers.
• Redwall: Redwall Abbey and the surrounding locations (e.g. Salamandstron, Mossflower Woods) are all over the place. Many of the characters are European animals, and a large portion of the cast speak with British accents or mannerisms, which would put it somewhere in the United Kingdom. However the existence of wolverines (e.g. Gulo) places it in the Northern Hemisphere (e.g. the Nordic countries, Northern Canada and/or Alaska), and Cluny was once referred to as being of Portuguese origin, which could place it somewhere near the Iberian Peninsula. Doesn't help that any elements of "human" nature (for example, the human-sized farm Squire Julian Gingivere lived on) vanished after the first book.
• In the Junie B. Jones series, the town and state where the titular protagonist and her family live is never stated, though it's implied it's in a warmer area of the US, as Junie B. Sweats without a jacket in one book.
• Blackbury, in multiple Terry Pratchett works, is definitely in England, but that's about it. It's possibly Oop North, given the similarity to "Blackburn", and the TV adaptation of Johnny and the Bomb went with that. On the other hand, Sir Terry's own stomping ground was the South-West, and in particular, one might expect that its early appearances in the children's page of The Bucks Free Press would be based on locations the children of Buckinghamshire would be familiar with. Confusing things further, the Nomes Trilogy was originally set in the real town of Grimsby, North-East Lincolnshire (which is either Oop North or The Midlands) before being Orwellian Retconned to Blackbury. The Bucks Free Press stories sometimes say it's in "Gritshire", which doesn't tell us much, and that it's near "Even Moor" ... but Britain is covered in moorland, so that doesn't help much either.
• It's hard to tell where the Dork Diaries books are set. Most clues point to it being around Los Angeles, California, but the town is shown to get heavy snowfall in the winter.
• Shade's Children: The city in the story is never named, nor its location given. All we know for sure is it's set on a sea or ocean, with a bay and a nearby island, while an old submarine serves as the heroes' hideout. Humans are also English-speaking, but that could apply to several countries. No definitive slang or references ever narrow it down further, though a few terms may indicate it's set in Australia (this is Garth Nix's home country).

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