To Kill a Mockingbird: Dewey Decimal Number and Fiction Subjects
Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird is recorded as 813/.54 in the selected Library of Congress entry, displayed here as 813.54. The entry describes Harper Lee’s first Perennial Classics edition, paperback ISBN 9780060935467. Its subjects include fathers and daughters, race relations, trials, and girls, all identified as fiction. This is an important distinction for a novel often encountered in discussions of law, society, and childhood: the topics help readers discover the story, but they do not turn it into a legal manual or a nonfiction history.
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The edition behind this number
How do the family and childhood subjects work together?
Fathers and daughters and girls are separate subject entries in the selected record. Together they offer a route into the novel through a child’s experience and a family relationship. The official book site describes the story through a young girl’s perspective and a father involved in a criminal defense. That broad outline helps identify the work without recounting the plot. A reader interested in how a child understands an adult world can begin with these subjects and then examine the narrative perspective in the text.
The record also includes domestic fiction and a coming-of-age genre label, Bildungsromans. Those descriptions give a reading group two related questions: how family life is represented, and how a young person’s understanding changes. Neither label should be treated as a complete description of the novel. They can guide a comparison of scenes or relationships, but an interpretation still needs passages. The value of the catalogue is that it makes several dimensions visible without requiring a reader to infer the entire subject from the title.
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Read the trial and race headings as fiction access
Race relations and trials involving rape appear with fiction qualifiers. The wording signals subject matter that a reader or teacher may need to know before selecting the book. It also makes a crucial source distinction: a fictional trial can be analysed as a narrative, but it is not a source for current legal procedure. A project that places the novel beside historical or legal materials should identify what each source contributes. The catalogue heading links the novel to a topic; it does not make every fictional event documentary evidence.
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A useful literary question is how the family perspective and the public trial interact. The catalogue gives both subjects, so a reader can look for passages where private relationships shape the understanding of public events. Another question is how the novel presents differences in social power. These are proposed approaches to reading the identified work, not legal advice or a declaration that the classification explains its moral meaning. The actual language and structure of the novel are the evidence for an interpretation.
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What does the geographic subject add?
The selected record names the Southern States with a fiction subdivision. The official book site likewise places the story in the Deep South. A geographic fiction search can therefore help a reader find other novels connected with the region. It should not be taken to imply that the book represents every community in that region or every historical period. For a comparison of settings, identify the time and place within each chosen work and distinguish the narrator’s account from general statements about the society outside the novel.
The Great Gatsby offers a concrete contrast within this site’s catalogue examples. Its selected Scribner record, ISBN 9780743273565, reports 813.52 and includes Long Island, wealthy people, and relationships among its subjects. Both books can serve a project about how fiction portrays a community, while their recorded settings and relationships point to different questions. Use those specific contrasts rather than claiming that all novels concerned with social class or injustice should have the same number. The classification values identify records; the subject fields help design the comparison.
Why are both 2002 and 1960 in the record?
The catalogue’s publication statement gives 2002 together with copyright 1960. Its edition statement says first Perennial Classics edition. These are different pieces of bibliographic information: the edition being described and a copyright date attached to the work. A reader should not call this the original 1960 physical edition just because that year appears in the record. The selected paperback is identified by its own edition statement and ISBN. This matters when a reading assignment, collection inventory, or citation requires a particular publication.
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The official book site identifies 9780060935467 as a modern-classic trade paperback and lists a deluxe modern-classic paperback separately under 9780061120084. That is a useful real-world distinction between products with the same novel title. The selected Library of Congress record describes 323 pages and includes the ten-digit counterpart 0060935464. The other product’s cover, paper, or supplementary features should not be assumed for this ISBN. For an edition-sensitive request, check the product identifier rather than using a visual resemblance between covers.
What should you take from this classification page?
The underlying field separately records edition 21 of the classification scheme. That value is not the novel’s publication year and does not describe a twenty-first edition of the book. Keep the raw 813/.54, the displayed 813.54, and the Perennial Classics edition statement in their own roles. A reader comparing this record with Gatsby’s will also see a different scheme-edition value. That observation alone does not explain the difference between the two assigned numbers; the records should be reported as they stand.
There is an unresolved detail inside this catalogue entry: a separate note calls it a fiftieth-anniversary edition, alongside the 2002 publication date, 1960 copyright, and first Perennial Classics edition statement. Those fields do not form a consistent anniversary description. This page preserves the record rather than changing its date or treating the anniversary note as verified for every copy with this ISBN. If an assignment specifically requires anniversary material, inspect the copy’s title and copyright pages or ask the holding library to confirm that feature.
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Sources for this edition guide
The record lists a valid ISBN associated with this edition. That does not independently verify every metadata field, establish a universal number for every version, or give the complete local shelf location. Compare the source with your copy.
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