W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature. Although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Of Human Bondage was ranked in the top 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Maugham indicates in his foreword that he derived the title from a passage in Baruch Spinoza's Ethics:
"The impotence of man to govern or restrain the emotions I call bondage, for a man who is under their control is not his own master ... so that he is often forced to follow the worse, although he see the better before him."

Of Human Bondage initially was criticized in both England and the United States; the New York World described the romantic obsession of the protagonist Philip Carey as "the sentimental servitude of a poor fool". The influential American novelist and critic Theodore Dreiser rescued the novel, referring to it as a work of genius and comparing it to a Beethoven symphony. His review gave the book a lift, and it has never been out of print since.