What's with the ___Shire?

I'm currently reading Jane Eyre and I just finished Pride and Prejudice, I am so happy to find this explanation of the blank before places or names like ____shire or Colonel____. I kind of assumed the answer was to avoid the appearance of slandering a name or location , but the question and answer given (from the Republic of Pemberly message board)is very well spoken.

Q:
Why does Jane Austen use ___shire instead of the actual name? I always assumed that it was because if she used a real place name, readers living there would say, "This author obviously knows nothing about this place. What a stupid book!" But I would like a more definitive answer if there is one. Thanks!

A:
That's one reason why they did it. A development of this was that if they used real places, or real regiments, or what looked like real places and real regiments, then people could say "Well, the Colonel of that regiment wasn't callled xxxxxx, or the Colonel of that regiment didn't do that/wasn't the fool you make him out to be/couldn't possibly have given that order!" Authors would be opening themselves up to accusations of libel, if not stupidity.

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. Defoes' 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.

So when Jane Austen wrote the _________shire regiment, or the Earl of _________, she was a)avoiding the pitfall of being accused of inaccuracy and b) avoiding the pitfall of being accused of criticism of some important political figures.

And just for the record, there realy was a militia regiment that went to Hertfordshire and then camped for the summer at Brighton. It was the Derbyshire Milita...

Now the Bronte sisters followed in this tradition, although I really don't know if they were as worried about political consequences as JA was. Jane Eyre is fairly obviously set in Northern Yorkshire and Durham, (The reference to Gateshead, a real place gives it away.) But Lowood School may well be based on a real place, in which case Charlotte was playing safe by not giving any more deatil about its location than she absolutely needed to.