The novel describes a period during the 1930s: his last term at school, and the following weeks living in Shanghai, China, where his father had a business.

[1] At the time in which the novel is set, the writer's father, Arthur Welch, was a director of Wattie & Co, rubber estate managers in Shanghai.

"[7] His father, sorry that he had run away from school, suggests in a letter that he come to Shanghai with his elder brother Paul, who is joining the company.

Junks with coloured sails and great eyes painted on their bows were stuck together with sampans and iron-plated steamers, like a pudding of small sago and large tapioca.

Travelling by train from Nankin to Kai-feng Fu, "I sat looking out of the window at the eternal hills and plains and cities of dried mud.

"[12] In The Times Literary Supplement, Marjorie Tiltman found an "astonishing awareness" from "an intolerant and clever pen", revealing "the over-egotism of the sensitive, the self-centeredness of the lonely in spirit, and, almost in spite of himself, awakes the reader's compassion.

"[13] In an observation arrestingly revealing of its era, Tiltman chooses to identify the act of "illegally demanding a half-ticket" for the Salisbury train in the opening lines of the book as an example of Denton's "mis-deeds".

Robert Phillips notes[14] that for some time following publication, many, including some significant bibliographies, took Maiden Voyage to be a work of literal autobiography.

However he notes that in selecting, arranging and embellishing details from his life, Welch causes them to "lose specifically personal meaning and begin to become universal human materials, elements of works of art".

[15] Phillips identifies several themes in the work, all inter-related, which include his attitude towards women following the early death of his mother, and heightened elements of his growing sexual awareness (emphatically not "awakening").

113–14), a boxing lesson from a furniture-mover he has been spying on and during which he takes a beating (p. 226) and an episode where he dresses up in his friend Vesta's frock (including make-up) before heading out into the street, fully aware that he resembles a prostitute (p. 243).