Terms of Endearment is in the tradition of the modern regional novel. It defines the twentieth-century Texas urban setting in a way that recalls Dreiser's Chicago setting of Sister Carrie (1900); Edna Ferber's Giant (1950) is also a precursor that is specifically Texan.

Another literary precedent can be identified as those novels whose action revolves around the relationship between a parent and child. McMurtry examines the traditional elements of conflict between mother and daughter as well as the strong love and loyalty that transcends all other bonds that people form.

Finally, the novel's great delight in its characters' eccentricity derives from both British and American traditions.

Aurora Greenway's roots are simultaneously in the "humours" character of British literature and in the western, larger-than-life tradition of American literature.