#105 in Classics
Of Human Bondage
- 590
- Pages
- about 11 h
- Reading time
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Our view
Patience and unsparing honesty mark Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage”, the story of a man’s growth from boyhood to maturity. Strongly autobiographical, it shows how each encounter, mistake and lesson shapes its hero over nearly six hundred pages. That hero divides readers: some find his choices, above all toward women, exasperating and parts of the journey dreary.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Of Human Bondage is a 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. The novel is generally agreed to be Maugham's masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although he stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography; though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had originally planned to call his novel Beauty from Ashes, finally settled on a title taken from a section of Spinoza's Ethics. The Modern Library ranked Of Human Bondage No. 66 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.3 across 93 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 39% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Classics average of 7.7. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.3 | 12 | 13% |
| Hardcover | 8.3 | 81 | 87% |
Frequently asked
How long is Of Human Bondage?
It has 590 pages — longer than 93% of the ranked books in Classics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Classics — with scores between 7.9 and 8.0, closest to this book.
