E. F. Benson's subject is always the petty concerns of petty people, but his talent is to make those concerns nearly as important to us as they are to his characters. For us, what happens to Benson's people is also much funnier than it is to them. This is another of Benson's social comedies with women battling it out for social supremacy in the village. "Mrs. Ames", first published in 1912, has been described as a forerunner to the author's Mapp and Lucia novels