Of Human Bondage is both a bildungsroman and an autobiographical novel.

Its emotions and themes are accurate in presenting those of Maugham's youth, although the narrative incorporates numerous fictional episodes and characters. Maugham is following in the footsteps of authors like Charles Dickens in David Copperfield (1849-1850) and Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh (1903). Like them he was content to narrate the work in the third person omniscient point of view, to arrange the narrative by strict chronology, and to draw heavily upon people he knew for characters in fiction. His art of the novel does not reveal significant innovation.