What are the ethics of using real-world house addresses in historical fiction?
I am editing a novel manuscript for a client of mine. It's a historical fiction set in 1948, so not that long ago. The main character lives in a house above a cafe that I believe is fictional within the real city the novel is set in. At one point, the address of the cafe is mentioned. Currently, the full address is not given, just the street it is on and some dashes in place of a house number.
Is it ethical to give a house address in a fictional novel that corresponds to a real-world place? Would the owners of that house be annoyed? Would it be better to come up with a non-existent house number along the desired street? (If so, would that be hard?)
The client is considering self-publishing, so there is no publishing house editor I should ask.
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I would use a fictional house number. You don't want to end up with the 221B Baker Street problem — so many people over the years thought Sherlock Holmes was real and tried to reach him that the genuine flat is now a Sherlock Holmes museum; nobody can live there. (The BBC had to film their series Sherlock on another street, because the actual Baker Street is covered in Holmes imagery.)
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In a case like this I would recommend looking up town records and using an old residential address that has since been demolished. This might take a bit of work, but gives the accuracy that your client seems to be looking for. Otherwise, look up some addresses and pick a number in between. Only locals would know the problem, and it would be a Platform 9 3/4 problem to them.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12385. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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